Clark Kent is Dead!
by SuperCharles
Summary: An explosion apparently claims the lives of several of the Daily Planets staff, it is presumed that Clark Kent is among them - his body incinerated by the blast. The story deals with the choices this calamity creates, & is set in the DCU's near future
1. Chapter 1

This started with a whim and an idea - Clark Kent is dead. Kind words over at the Superman-n-WonderWoman Yahoo Group have encouraged me to write more, and with 3 chapters completed I feel there is more to this story - and the story wants to be told.

For your benefit dear reader this story is occurs in the near future of (my approximation of) the current DC comics Universe, using DC's trademarked characters, and is not in the same Universe as my other ongoing fic.

Please feel free to contact me by any of the usual means, and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.

* * *

Clark Kent is dead.

I didn't plan it that way, it was one of those things. Clark is human, that is the conceit, Kal-El however is Krypton's Last Son Plus - a Kryptonian with lifelong exposure to Sol's rays makes me more than my nature, as does my human upbringing, my nurture, these together make me Superman; and I chose to hide in plain sight, to play to peoples prejudices.

The problem came with the explosion.

I smelled the C5 when the elevator door opened, it was a simple choice, I grabbed Lois, and exited the building, as a fireball consumed the bomber and everything in the immediate vicinity. I've played the scenario back countless times, and I know I couldn't have done this differently. The bomb was timed perfectly to kill Clark Kent.

The explosion took out the entire Planet News Room, among the dead was Perry White, and the blast vaporised those nearest the lift doors, leaving nothing to identify.

I intended to come up with a story, it would be easy, Clark had stepped out, escaped the explosion, and here he is returning from the dead.

The video evidence was the problem. I move quickly, by the time the bomb detonated I had already moved from my desk and was in costume, taking hold of Lois. I could explain here how my powers really work, how I am able to negate mass but that's science beyond the ken of mortal man so I won't go there, I will say the surveillance tape frame by frame show Clark at his desk one moment, adjacent to the lift. The next frame shows that same work station being consumed in a fireball.

Information technology. The security feed delivered the images to another building on the other side of the continent.

"Maybe I could have been blown clear." I told Lois.

"That stretches credibility, and you are already on a number of watch lists as it is."

She said coolly. I took her anger to be indicative of her frustration and grief, we'd lost Perry, among other friends and colleagues, I was just glad Jimmy and so many others were on assignment. It could have been worse.

"Internet chatter." I said. "People have speculated about Superman living among them for years."

"Smallville, you are good at what you do, but give us some credit. You also work for a major metropolitan newspaper, if you think the surviving staff of the Daily Planet are not going to question Clark Kent escaping death once again – when so many didn't, you are wrong. Heck it's bad enough you saved me. They look at me as if to say why you – why you yet again?"

It was survivors guilt I thought. "Lois maybe you need to talk to someone."

"Spare me Clark, I don't need a shrink."

"Perhaps the Flash could have...?"

Lois laughed, she was really angry, I could smell it, her adrenaline levels were up.

Lois laid it out for me, she had done the research. "All the League are accounted for – there isn't a single hero capable of pulling a human like Clark Kent out of an explosion unseen that can't be placed definitively somewhere else."  
"I'm sure I can figure.."

"Dammit Smallville." Lois exploded. "You probably could."

I looked at her sadly, she had lost it again.

"Don't you get it?" She shook her head at me, and those violet eyes burned. "I am tired, tired of your bull, your lies." Lois laid into me, hammering my chest, she might hurt herself, so I held her arms."

"Let me go." She said breathing slowly.

I did. She looked me – her eyes were cold. "Hell I am tired of putting up with all your crap. Clark Kent especially.

"It's incredibly frustrating to live with, if we're with anyone, anyone normal I mean, as a couple - you're falling over your oversized shoes, trying to appear mild mannered. But if it's one of the Justice League, one who knows who you are, well then I'm just the outsider."

"Now Lois that isn't true."

"Clark it _is_ true. The only one of your regular League pals who is human is Bruce, and that is taking the definition of human to extremes, where do I start – I have to include a level of obsessive paranoia and what can only be genius-is-madness personified.

"And don't get me started on Diana – she's only my best friend – Wonder Woman."

"Now Lois that's unfair, Diana and Bruce understand..."  
"Yes they understand you. Unlike Lois on the inside looking in, hell you give Kyrpto a longer leash than you give me, because unlike me, he's not going to fall off a building or get blown up by a bomb. He's invulnerable."

"Krypto! He could had grabbed Clark..."

"Smallville don't you get it?" Lois screamed at me. "Clark Kent is legally dead. Leave him dead."

"But Lois that would mean that legally we're no longer married."

"_Now_ you finally understand Kal."

"You can't mean,.."  
"That we're saving a fortune on Lawyers – yeah I mean it. Come on Kal, you know me - I wasn't a one woman man when you met me."

I frowned. I was angry, that is never good for me. No man likes to dwell on his girl's ex-boyfriends.

"Don't get me wrong, it's been fun at times - but I'm done with you." Lois said.  
"You can't be serious?" I made fists with my hands, I should have seen this coming, the way she was with me, passive aggressive, always trying to dominate, putting herself in danger. Bruce had almost told me as much, trying to lead me to the place where I could see it for myself.

But I'd made promise, a wedding vow. Pa would hammered that into me, an honourable man keeps his word. It was a place I couldn't look, and Bruce knew that too, he never pushed me, but he knew.

"It's not you, it's me." She laughed. "Sorry that sounds trite, but this time it's the truth.

"A woman likes to know she's treasured, likes to know she's cared for, but you take this to the nth degree, in your hands I am literally like the worlds most fragile china, you can never cut loose with me, you have to be in control of your every thought – every twitch, always."

"Lois it's like that with everyone for me, I live in world made of cardboard and paper."

"Is it like that with Diana?" Lois asked.

I couldn't answer that, because I knew what the truth was. Diana knew what it was like to live in a world where the people you live among are made of glass.

"Smallville it was novel, even nice to begin with, but I need a man I know I can hurt, and that he can hurt me back, I have to know it's real, human, this marriage it's just an artificial contrivance, alien."

The word alien cut to the quick of me.

"I didn't realise you felt this way."

"It's not like you haven't your job to keep you busy, we both know every minute you spend with me, people are dying needlessly because you are playing house. Time to face facts I'm not what you need, and you are not what I want.

"I'm a widow Kal-El. I was already a widow to your real job long before Clark Kent died, now he's gone we both need to mourn his passing, and move on with the rest of our lives."

"You can't mean that."

"I need to find my equal, and so do you, maybe when you finally make love to some one who won't break in two if you lose focus for a millisecond you'll finally relax and be a real joined up person. Not three people occupying the same space, Clark, Kal, Superman.

"Maybe then you'll come and see me and maybe then we'll be friends, but you need to go Superman, go to your Fortress, and leave me be, let me live my life, take my own risks, just like any other natural born human being.

"And you need to work out who you are."

I flew clear, I had too. I was angry and I couldn't stay in the same room as Lois when I was angry.

There is was only place I could go and that was Gotham.


	2. Chapter 2

I wasn't subtle, I didn't want to surprise Bruce – I wanted him to  
know I was coming. The fastest way for me to travel is a vertical up and  
over, in space I can kick loose and really pour on the speed, there  
isn't the resistance from that precious bubble of atmosphere, but I came  
down early. I could have dropped like stone from heaven, instead I  
swooped in at an angle coming in hot and blazing, a ball of angry fire  
through the air. I am ashamed to say it felt great, even cleansing, then  
shedding speed coming in low like a jet I sighted Gotham as the curve of  
the Earth turned beneath me. I let the sonic boom announce my arrival.  
Knowing in the cave a dozen or so sensors will be lighting Bruce's  
displays like a Christmas tree.

We have different approaches.

Bruce with his black and grey urban camouflage, me, I am all primary  
colours, with my cape like a red flag people can see me in air above  
them, I might be man dwarfed by my cities tallest buildings, but I cut a  
dashing and visible figure when I leap them.

"She's left me." I told him.

He didn't turn around, not at first His fingers rapped the keys of his  
interface. I pulled up a chair and waited patiently for him to finish.

"What did you do Clark?" He asked.

There was a genuine sadness in his voice, he didn't use the deeper tone  
he'd use as Batman, or Bruce Wayne Playboy's lightness. It was just  
Bruce. I checked him over. He was in good shape for once, if I ignored  
the scar tissue.

I had Kryptonite. Bruce had his humanity.

"Clark Kent died." I told him. "That's what I did."

"Not for the first time." He commented.

"But Lois wants him to stay dead, she wants an easy out, as a  
widow."

"I'm guessing she's reached that stage in the relationship."

"What do you mean?"

"Clark your parents taught love conquers all, you learned family was  
a matter of choice, and again it was love that held a family together  
and not blood.

"Believe me – I understand that, Alfred taught me about loyalty  
when I was made an orphan. I tried to share that truth with Dick and the  
others, that we can be a family by choice."

"But my friend, we are the exception and not the rule."

"I love her Bruce."

"I know you do. But honestly I don't believe she really ever loved  
you."

I frowned. I let him see the lines, it's something I have to do, I can  
frown so fast his human eyes – brain network can't process the  
expression.

Bruce knows this. "At least not in the same way." He conceded  
that she had loved me once. That was nice of him at least, I was still  
angry, but I stayed in control, Bruce was never going sugar coat his  
advice, and I was ready for that.

"Lois fell in love with idea of you, with Superman, she believed you  
could do anything, hell Clark some days even I wonder about that - you  
even came back from the dead."

I shook my head, I knew what he was saying, but I did not think of  
myself in those terms.

"She believed you could love her and do your duty at the same time,  
you were Superman and she loves that Superman. Truth is Clark, you know  
it, I know it, even with all your powers you couldn't save him."

"Damn you Bruce." I knew he was talking about my pa, about the day he died.

"Clark that was the moment I knew. When I saw how Lois dealt with Jonathan Kent's death. That was the moment I stopped  
guessing, "  
"Guessing? You've been hinting Lois and I were a train wreck waiting  
to happen for years."

"I suspected her motives, Clark, that's who I am, and you're  
Superman. Get it. I had to consider what made you vulnerable, damage  
you, make you dangerous. I couldn't predict Doomsday, but I could see  
Lois Lane represented a emotional and psychological danger."

"This isn't the talk I imagined."

"What did you expect? If you wanted touchy-feely you'd be with  
Diana, but you are not dumb Clark, although sometimes you allow people  
to think you are brawn before brains, you aren't wired that way. You  
came here for the truth, for tough love.

"Seriously did you think I would have prepared a plan to cover the  
eventuality of you asking me how to save your marriage?"

"Actually for the reason you just cited earlier ie my mental health  
– I did."

"Well Clark the truth is I did think about it, and of all the  
scenario's I considered this is the least evil outcome I could imagine,  
save for the deaths at the Planet, I wish that hadn't happened."

"You are saying that Lois ending our marriage was inevitable, and  
even a good thing?" Anger crept into my voice, my hand formed a  
fist. Bruce's heartbeat flipped at little. His hand moved a fraction  
towards the lead lined canister on his utility belt.

"Yes." He answered honestly. "I'm saying yes, in the sense  
Lois is human, and her humanity was going to end your marriage. Chances  
are Clark you are going to outlive everyone of us, save Diana. Lois was  
going to leave you one way or another – and the longer that took,  
the higher I rated the potential for you human heart – your psyche,  
the product of your upbringing, would be damaged irreparably."

"Irreparably?" I asked surprised.

"I mean in human terms, in my terms, before I was dead  
basically."

I saw what he was trying to say, the more time I spent with Lois the  
harder giving her up would become. I wasn't sure I was convinced by  
that, in those first few weeks and months, had I lost her to say one of  
Luthor's schemes, I'd would have turned back time - if it were possible,  
just to have her in my life.

"I can understand death separating us Bruce. I see my mother, how  
she misses my pa. That's right and natural. This ending, her leaving me  
– her choice; it's the worst situation I can imagine. I feel numb, I  
feel angry, and I can't quite believe it's real."

"You would rather she was dead?" Bruce asked.

I almost snapped an of course not, but my internal lie detector called  
me out.

Bruce read my silence. "That way she would still love you forever  
– at least your memory of her would."

I wanted to deny it with all of my logical mind, but my human heart felt  
differently, Bruce was right it would have been easier if she was dead,  
a perfect memory, instead she was alive and rejecting my love.

"Clark when you lost Jonathan, Lois saw the future, she saw you as  
you are today unchanged, not ageing, kneeling over her grave in  
pain."

"How can you know?"  
"Because that's what every human feels when they see someone they  
know die, it's a reminder of their own mortality.

"Hell I saw myself in the ground, with Dick an old man, and you  
still wearing those glasses and an ill fitting suit, looking all of 35,  
listening to my corpse just to make sure I wasn't pulling a trick on  
you."

"Bruce I realise I will outlive most of my friends."

"And I believe you Clark, but Lois didn't get it. Oh she thought she  
did, she imagined she could deal with the idea, all the differences  
between you – you a strange visitor from another planet, her the go  
getting girl reporter, in fact I'm sure the woman you married was even  
relieved she could forget about kids and concentrate on a Pulitzer.

"But she's looking at middle age, the lines are beginning to show,  
and she can see them. Clark you can be sure when she looks at those blue  
blue eyes of yours my friend, that Lois knows you see every pore, every  
flaw. Simply she is getting older and you are getting better looking  
every day."

I wasn't, but I wasn't getting older, I had considered using make up  
maybe giving myself some grey hairs, but it wasn't about my self image,  
but rather hers.

"Basically what she wanted when she married you, isn't what she  
wants now. Face it farm boy that's the American way today."

"I don't like it."

"That half of all marriages end in divorce? Lois isn't Martha, she  
isn't childless by accident of biology, she didn't give up her own  
career to support her husband in his life choice and raise a child who  
was not her own. Not permanently at least.

"Clark I look at your humanity – your values, the standards you  
learned from your parents, and I see something that is alien to many  
people today."

"I knew you would never leave her, but I expected her to leave  
you."

"How?"

"Takes one to know one." Bruce replied honestly. "Bruce  
Wayne gets around Clark, I don't know if I could find the happiness your  
parents enjoyed. I like chasing tail.

"Lois liked it too. She caught you, you were the ultimate catch, but  
what she imagined her life was going to be like with you wasn't the way  
it was.

"She found out what sharing you with the world actually meant. I  
noticed it every time when I met with you as a couple, she resented your  
comrades in arms. Even after you showed her your secrets, your true  
self, there was still something she could not experience – your  
calling."

"You are human Bruce and you,.."

"No I don't."

I looked at him, and under the mask I saw a lonely child looking back at  
me.

"I am a human inside looking at you and Diana, and the others, all  
of you who live in world of reaction times that make me look like I'm  
standing still. We're friends, but we're far from equals."

"Bruce I never meant..."

"You can't help being who you are."

"You are basically saying I have to let her go."

"If you love her – and you do, you will, she has given you a  
great gift, if she had died in that explosion I hate to imagine how  
withdrawn you might have become, now that is a scenario I did plan  
for."

"But not this one?"

"This one I figured Diana would have covered."

"You just said I did the smart thing coming to you first."

Bruce lent forward resting his hands on his thighs. "Shock, then  
denial, then acceptance and grief Clark. Shock made you fly away from  
Metropolis. Denial brought you to the one person, me - who was mad  
enough to have thought about how to deal with today, and acceptance  
means letting your emotions out, it means cutting loose my friend, and  
the only person on the planet who is equipped to deal with your tears,  
who has the compassion and the strength of mind and body to cope is  
Diana. That was always obvious."


	3. Chapter 3

It could have been any where, Rotterdam, Liverpool or Rome, but I chose the North Western Seaboard of the United States of America. I am Diana Princess of Themyscira, Ambassador, Peace envoy, Amazon, and Wonder Woman; patron to many worthy charities, and a pin-up girl in many more bedrooms, and barracks across the World.

And I tell myself that this is just two friends meeting for coffee.

Boston Harbour, the sun is shining, sail boats are on the water, and he sits waiting for me. As I approach, he stands and smiles, in an old fashioned display of good manners, I suspected his mother would expect nothing less of him. He adjusted the glasses he wore using his forefinger, I recognised the gesture, if not the frames. He wore dark shades, not the heavy prescription spectacles I'd long grown accustomed too. Perhaps he'd picked up this ensemble from the fortress; a shirt, dark jeans, and a pair of hand made cowboy boots, you can take the boy out of Kansas, but not Kansas out of the boy.

"Hello Kal." I said. I steadied my heart, I knew he listened to my unique beat, the rhythm of my blood. Amazon training, essentially mind over matter gave me preternatural control over my body. The hunter in me sensed something was amiss – something was wrong with him. I invoked Athena in my soul, a god mother in every sense of the word.

"Diana, did I ever tell you that you have the worse secret identity in the world?" He whispered as he brushed my cheek with a fraternal kiss.

"Why is that Kal?" I replied.

"You make even the most business like of suits look as the finest haute couture."

I brushed the sober grey material of my two piece as I sat down.

"What are you saying?" I asked meaning to be mischievous, placing my own deceptive frames on the table between us. My hair remained in the French Twist after the style of a late American Princess.

He smiled. "Only you wear your clothes so well, you have an elegance that cannot be disguised."

I waved a hand dismissively, it was a gentle compliment, but it mattered because I trusted Kal to tell me the truth.

I listened to the chatter coming from his phone. He was monitoring news feeds globally, the device wasn't all it seemed, and was broadcasting the information to him over a frequency well above human perception.

I picked up the generic looking touch screen phone. "Let the rest of the League take care of the world for five minutes." I told him, killing the background noise.

He frowned at me, a flicker of his face executed so quickly that no one simply human could see it.

We ordered coffee. The Waitress looked at us both with questioning eyes, our faces were famous, but our costumes more so, the bright colours reassured and distracted the public eyes from our features. Even so her eyes lingered on Kal, his thick dark hair was slicked back, the style neither business like, as favoured by Clark Kent, nor the signature kiss curl that always adorned Superman's forehead, as distinctive as my own tiara.

I did not blame her for looking, Clark Kent was a persona Kal donned as a man might a hat, it changed him in subtle ways, his posture, his voice, his mannerisms changed, but cumulatively the end result was a transformation. Yet here he was Kal – but not in costume, Kal lite. Kal minus the Kryptonian glyph that by happenstance had been mistaken for the letter S.

I drew my own conclusions.

"I was very sorry to hear about Perry." I told him. "How is Alice coping?"

"She called Ma, to tell her about Clark." He told me. "They have been talking to each other quite a lot since the bombing."

Of course I thought, Martha had lost Jonathan recently, she understood Alice White's grief.

"When is Clark going to reappear?" I asked.

He removed his glasses. His cerulean blue eyes met my own, I saw them glisten. Tears for Clark Kent, or because of him, instinctively I found myself favour the latter.

"Clark Kent is dead." He said.

"He is listed as a casualty, as dead, but not for the first time." Was this why he had asked me here, to ask my help? "Is there something you want me to do?"

His eyes closed, I listened to his breathing, to his heart, he wasn't the only one who had mastery of their enhanced senses. I reached out to him, all my senses were telling me something was very wrong.

"Kal what is it? What's up?"

"Lois wants Clark to stay dead." The statement hung there.

"But that would make her a widow?" Athena, god mother, wisdom personified, what is Lane doing?

"That is what she wants." Kal told me. I took his hand. Coffee steamed untouched on the table between us, the Spring air was cool, the morning sun rose towards it's zenith, he basked in it's rays, the suns power in person.

"She has left me." He told me, his hand gripped mine, I felt his pain expressed as his fingers held mine. Lois had done this to him, but Lois could not have withstood this touch – his anguish here was measured in tons per square inch, pressure that would have pulped her fingers, but not mine, thank Hera, I could take it.

"Why? Why would she do that to you?" I asked him, abandoning all pretence of control, within me blood pounded, echoing in my ears, his and mine, emotions ran wild. His and mine.

He shook his head, and a tear formed in his eye, I was beside him, it was an incautious use of speed, carrying my chair next to his. I brushed that tear from his cheek.

"Are you sure it's her?" I asked.

"Yes it's her, I checked when she gave me the news."

I did not doubt him, he knew her intimately, in ways she could not grasp, just as I knew him, my best friend, I knew the pattern on his finger tips, the very pores on his skin, his scent, his heart's music. "Was it her mind? Her soul?"

He laughed. Not at me, not at her, but himself. "Yes and No." He replied. "Isn't that the tragedy? The truism; a woman marries a man hoping to change him, and a man marries a woman hoping she will not change."

"Is it Lois?" I asked again, my mind sifted through the possible candidates, from Lex Luthor to Max Lord, on earth, and off world; there were so many ways to possess a person, in mind, body and soul.

He shook his head. "It's Lois. She's changed, but not overnight. It has been gradual, and natural. I saw it but I didn't let myself believe it, I listened to her, watched her, I saw the changes, but I believed we'd come through them, I thought she believed in us too. Simply I believed the definitive things she told me in the beginning more than I did her complaints towards the end."

"I'm not the right person to talk to about this." I told him. "Truthfully."

He looked at me taking my hand into his turning them together. He did not need to say it. He believed me, we both knew the value each of us placed on the truth.

"Kal I have never liked Lois, nor her me. We respected each other, yes I would say that much, I could applaud her independence, her success as a journalist, and she supported my work with the Justice League and my charities, but personally..." I sighed, "we were friends because of you, through you, not of ourselves."

I had almost said in not so many words that I was glad the witch was dead. Being the avatar of truth isn't always easy. Why was I thinking of Oz, of Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road, golden like my lasso, as the Munchkins danced around the flattened Wicked Witch of the East; singing 'the witch is dead.'

Damn Lois! I was angry at her, because she had hurt my best friend, my dearest brother, the man who personified the good Patriarch.

"You should take this to Bruce." I said, I took away my hand. Was I angry at him too? I took control of my heart once more, the Amazon in me ordered my thoughts and channelled my emotions.

He confessed to me. "I have."

Ouch, that came as surprise. He had gone to Bruce first. Oh I knew Bruce, broken bitter courageous and always prepared Bruce, he was all man, a collection of contradictions, and I knew it.

For a moment I had glimpsed in Bruce, how my mother came to be so enraptured by Heracles, another all man – a collection of contractions, I understood the attraction, I had been my mother's daughter with him, because of that realisation I had found myself again; I had walked away from the darkness, from Bruce, I couldn't see clearly in his shadow. By Hera I would not repeat my Mother's mistake.

"What did he say?"

"That it was all for the best. He didn't say I told you so in as many words, but that was the thrust of his wisdom." Kal repeated much of his conversation with Bruce verbatim. I listened, after a short while he finished.

"Tough Love." I concluded, still smarting.

"I needed it." Kal told me. "I wasn't ready to let go. I thought Bruce could scheme a way around my problem, because honestly Diana I was hurting, and I wasn't thinking clearly. I chose _not_ to believe Lois could break her promises to me, even when the evidence was there to be seen. Bruce believed she would, and that any breakup would hurt me, muddle my thinking.

"He was right, and I'm a fool." Kal told me shamefaced by the admission.

"No." I told him. Pulling both his hands into mine, I looked into his eyes, and with all the passion I could muster. "Kal you believed in love. You made a promise, and decided to keep it. That is not foolish – it is noble. It is a nobility that Bruce does not aspire too. Bruce is only faithful to one thing and one thing alone, and that is Batman, that is the fight – his vengeance."

"I trusted her."

"Yes and she has let you down, broken her promises to you. Human beings make mistakes Kal. You make them, I make them, Lois makes them.

"Look Kal Lois believed she was a better person than she actually is." There I had said it. "You look for the best in people, it is your greatest power – above them all – your ability to inspire, to create hope, and to get people to believe in truth and justice."

"Lois is good person." Kal said.

"She is." I agreed. "But like each of us, she has her faults, and she has grown old enough and wise enough to recognise them. I admire her for that." Athena my god mother, your wisdom is both a gift and a curse I thought as I watched Kal thinking his lips pursed, emotions only just below the surface, I remembered how briefly we toyed with the idea of dating each other, how different we were then, I was wise but inexperienced with Patriarchs world. He was full of his youth and power, unbloodied by death and defeat, we were from alien worlds – both of us. Yet in the League we had learned together, fought together, and grown together; but back then if I had been any other woman I would have taken his first kiss, ill-judged as it was, and run, no, flown with it, instead wisdom reigned in my heart. Neither of us was ready. Lois hadn't Athena's gift, and she had embraced him with her all, but not for ever, and not happily for ever after either.

She had grown up.

"You think she has done the right thing?" He asked.

"She has done the right thing for Lois, but then again she always has done the right thing for Lois, when it mattered to her, from chasing you for that first interview, to second guessing your identity, to marrying Clark Kent, and now laying him to rest."

Just as he accepted my praising his great nobility in silent humility, the same silence told me he recognised the Lois Lane we had both known.

"Will you miss Clark?" He asked me.

I looked at him, even in emotional pain, his natural posture was refined, gentle but powerful; would I miss the slouching mild mannered reporter – the façade, his conceit. "No Kal, I can't say I will.

"What will you do – be Superman twenty-four-seven?"

He shrugged. "I am always, I can't turn off my powers like a Green Lantern."

I nodded, we shared that too. "But you need down time." I cautioned him, brushing his hand with mine, it happened before I really thought about it.

"I was thinking I could spend my 'down time' on the farm."

"Your mother will like that."

He smiled. "Of course, I will have to take the role of a new farm hand perhaps."

His smile told me what I already knew – he loved been close to nature, to growing living things, we shared an empathy with the natural world too.

"Will you miss being a reporter?"

"I'm not sure, when I decided on a career in journalism, I was still a kid, the internet hadn't taken off, and I had the idea in my mind that the job would help me save lives.

"The reality is the same information technology revolution that made Superman's and Clark Kent's dual identity harder to maintain, also made the reason I chose journalism redundant.

"I can still use the experience I gained as a reporter to manage my informants. While the farm's rural location actually makes it easier for Superman to get his work done."

"You've thought this through."

"Bruce isn't the only one to have made contingency plans." He replied.

"I have to get back to the Embassy." I said regretfully.

"Come to the Fortress tonight." He said.

I paused considering the wisdom of this. The pain in his eyes spoke volumes to me. "I'll see you later." I told him, thinking, the old truth, that friend in need is a friend indeed. I owed him this much.


	4. Chapter 4

My name is...

I think hard. Not that he'd notice, I'm too quick for that. I'm a Kryptonian meat, sun charged Kryptonian meat to be precise, the world knows me as Superman, here in Kansas, in Smallville they knew me as Clark Kent.

"Callum Connor." I replied, the Irish lilt to my voice an easy affection for someone who has precise muscle control. I've always found it funny how my fighting style gets critiqued and compared to the Batman, _they_ call me a bruiser, but do _they_ realise the extent of the practised control it takes to measure every movement, to gauge how much force to use. Not easy when you can pulp a man with one finger. Bruce is an extraordinary martial artist, if breaking bones and tearing muscles and tendons can rightly be seen as an art. I find the ability to see the damage I inflict in glorious colour, layer by layer from the skin to bone a sobering experience.

"I hear you are working at the Kent Farm?"

Tom Staples mans the desk at the Smallville's sprawling Agricultural Merchants yard, kind of a farmer's Wall Mart, you can buy everything from an electric fence to a checked shirt via catering sized packs of essential food stuffs and a Combine Harvester.

"That I am." I smile as if I haven't already endured the sixty four question routine a dozen times today already. I just came in for a few rolls of fencing wire.

Home on the farm again, living with mom, doing chores in the great outdoors. Hand to the plough, working with living things, vegetable and animal, seeing smelling everything around me alive, vital. Frankly it's wonderful. It is fresh air to my soul.

Metropolis, was all steel, dry concrete, people and rats. You are never more than a couple of feet away from a rat in Metropolis. It's no worse than any city in that regard, I just see them, because I see so much more all the time, whereas the rats, both the four and two legged kind - the underworld, and the innocent forgotten, the homeless, they are out of sight out of mind for most of the population.

I'm back in the old barn, making myself at home in the hay loft where I spent so much time as kid, my own place, my own space.

I've cleaned it up a bit, and added some home comforts, for appearances sake. There is a door now, a proper window, dry wall lines the interior, the basic plumbing is installed. I can shower the honest grime from my skin. Keeps the illusion real.

I sit at my desk. The computer flickers into life, this I still have. The rhythm of the keys, I can write, I can craft words into sentences. It helps.

I catch sight of my wrist. Diana's friendship bracelet glitters reflecting the screen. A trinket of Themyscira, the real deal, Amazonium, or Adamant as the ancients called this unique alloy, the material the Amazons forge their vambraces and their weapons from, not as tough as Wonder Woman's unique god forged bracelets, but close.

I remember how her gift shone in the Arctic light. Diana reached across and placed the bracelet in my hand.

"Kal for you, so you know that where ever I am – I am thinking about my best friend."

I didn't know how to tell her I didn't wear jewellery. So I put it on there and then. Pa would have shook his head and given me a withering look that said men don't wear jewellery. In his life he wore a watch, and when he took mom out, his wedding ring, and that was a concession to her. In his line of work jewellery more that got in the way, it could hurt you.

I knew this bracelet was different. I was different.

The Northern lights coloured the night sky in their glorious alien light. We sat on the pinnacle of the Fortress, together in the wind, exposed to the night. Not that she or I felt the cold. Her hand rested on Kyrpto's head, he loved her, unquestioningly.

She had flown here to be greeted by Krypto who hit her travelling at just sub sonic, he's a good dog when it comes to avoiding unnecessary low level booming. Lois had really never taken to my pet, she was city girl at heart, an army brat on the move she hadn't been able to have a dog as a kid, and the dog, well he knew; it was obvious, the way he was with Mom, and Diana was different, to the quiet and respectful distance he and Lois observed. I laughed at myself, could it be the Dog knew too.

"What's funny Kal." Diana asked.

I realised how long I'd been sitting with her in silence. Guilt washed over me. I had no business sitting here feeling sorry for myself like some spoiled child. Grow up Kent. I told myself. People are dying the world over. There is no time for tears.

Pa would say "Clark put your man pants on."

"Krypto loves you, you know." I told her.

"Yes he does. I have an affinity with animals. It is one of my gifts." She looked at me. "Oh." Diana mouthed. She understood, Lois's neuroses cast a long shadow. Now she looked guilty.

Anger overwhelmed me.

I struck out – upwards to the stars.

Diana was with me, I roared in rage, demanding from the night. "Why?"

I repeated myself, how many times I'm not even sure.

Then I looked at her, tears fell from eyes like rain. "I don't want you to see me like this."

She reached out to me, the air grew thin around us, the atmosphere of the earth exposed as the thinnest blue line, delicate against the vastness of space. Diana took hold of me as I shook with emotion, embracing me. She held on to me as sobbing I shook with rage.

There was not another person on earth that could have done this for me, There were beings who were in my league when it came to power, but there wasn't anyone who had Diana's blend of strength and empathy. No one had the strength to hold me with my defences down, no one was tough enough to take that chance now my control was broken, and have the compassion to do so gently and with love. No one but Wonder Woman.

I know why she gave me this bracelet, and I know why I wear it. I try not to think about what magic might have been worked into the metal when the Amazon Artisan crafted this simple metal band. The only decoration the stylised Eagle of Athena, goddess of wisdom, Diana's crest. I am both valued, admired and loved by a goddess, an Avatar of Truth, and a true hero. Even if Lois Lane girl reporter doesn't love me any more.

Time to eat.

The Farm house was a touchstone of consistency, there were details added here and there, a picture of Conner Kent channelling James Dean, lolling over a coral fence, another of Lana Lang and her 'niece' Linda; my cousin.

I touch the image of Lana's face, a reminder that I have loved other women before Lois. Lois has become like a black hole in my heart, a gravity well sucking in my happiness, my hopes, and my dreams. Her choice has stolen the future I imagined.

I remember Lana. There was love before Lois, and so inevitably there was also love after her.

"Every relationship has a life Clark." Martha Kent told me.

Mom still calls me Clark when we're alone together. She remembers to call me Cal when we have company. Even if she were to make a mistake by calling me Clark in front of someone else, it wouldn't be the end of the world, rather understandable given the circumstances.

"Sometimes a relationship's life is a lifetime, but not always, fate, tragedy intervenes and you get left alone."

"Lois wasn't taken from me, not like Pa." I look at his photograph. Next to it is a small urn, this contains the 'ashes' of Clark Kent, in reality a portion of the ash from Daily Planet Newsroom, a gesture to the bereaved, when nothing remains of the dead.

My mother serves dinner. "Clark what Lois chose to do makes me as mad as hell. I'm angry on so many levels I can't put it into words, but I know my son is bigger than the pain, and I know it's possible to love again."

I looked into to her eyes, the smell of her home cooking comforting.

"Jonathan I dated as kids, different people from different sides of the track, I couldn't see it going anywhere."

I didn't think about my mother's first marriage much, her and pa seemed so right – so connected, it was easy to forget she had been Mrs Fordman.

"I married the kind of successful man my parents expected me too. Dan Fordman was a good business man, from a good family."

"A wealthy one." I observed.

Ma didn't deny that she had been expected to love where money was found. "I loved him. When he told me he was dying I was devastated, I was still counting my marriage in months, and my husband was telling me he had terminal cancer. I thought the world had come to an end. Then Jonathan came back from the war, and he found me again. We found each other.

"I discovered I could love again, and it wasn't a pale imitation of love, second best, rather the opposite, with your pa it was the real thing. With Jonathan it was better. It didn't matter that we were still from different worlds."

She smiled and dug into the beef casserole.

"I said to Jonathan I wasn't eating read meat, you know what happened, he said he'd take on my liberal hippy green environmental nonsense if I'd start eating beef.

"I told him he was a red-neck republican. God n' Guns. He said, if you want me to try this organic farming idea then I need to raise more stock for manure - if he couldn't use artificial fertilizer he needed the natural kind, although he didn't say manure."

My mom laughed at that memory. She missed him.

"I baulked at him, but Jonathan pointed out that without animals, without the meat trade, as part of the natural order of things, the rotation of crops the organic farm couldn't work."

I asked. "I remember this story. What gives?"

"We both did. We listened to each other, and learned from each other."

"I learned how Jonathan loved his animals and took care of them, yes they ended up on the table, and yes the quality of life they enjoyed was unnatural, but only in the sense it was one without predators chasing them, where disease was treated, a difficult birth didn't mean death for the cow and calf, because he was there – you were there."

I remembered working with the cattle, my small hands were ideal for the task, slipping into the birth canal I could turn a calf, rearrange twisted the legs so it could be born and I had the strength to assist, I didn't need ropes or a block and tackle to pull them clear, I could really see what was going on. Then I would rub them down with straw, ensure they could breathe as their mother licked them, kissing them into the world.

"Those were hard years at first. Organic farming was considered hippy far out nonsense. Jonathan was laughed at for a long time."

I remembered my pa working his knuckles cut raw as he battled with another broken machine, toiling over the ancient tractor, making the most of what we had. "But as fashions changed so did the Kent fortunes." I said. "They stopped laughing then."

"Rich or poor we did what we felt was right." Ma said.

I sighed. "Lois and I were different too. I thought we could learn like you."

"So did I Clark." She agreed, adding, "But I was still a country girl, Lois not so much."

"I had moved on too, left the farm." I said, looking around at what I had come back too, my roots.

"You were never a Metropolitan man." My mother laughed. She put emphasis on the Metro. Like Metrosexual, I thought.

"I guess I wasn't."

"Why do you think she called you Smallville? From the get go Lois thought you were a farm boy, provincial, it wasn't a compliment Clark, it stopped her seeing the real man under the mild mannered act you played for too long. Like being a farmer's son made you simple."

I was surprised by my mother's venom, she had been hurt and betrayed too, Lois had been here with her, sharing and talking many times. Martha Kent had lost a daughter too.

"What's this?" She asked pointing at my wrist. Of course she had noticed long before. My mother was a patient woman, and I hadn't mentioned it.

"Diana gave it to me." I said, and I waited. I'm my mother's son.

Ma smiled. I knew that expression, what son doesn't – the knowing smile.

So I added. "It's a symbol of our friendship."

"Yes a friendship bracelet." She agreed. "Apple pie?"

"Of course. Thank you Mom."

I cleared the dirty dishes. She served. "You know." Ma said. "I think Diana is good for you." She smiled. "As a friend." She added.

I looked at the bracelet. "You know I think this is her way of keeping tabs on me, I wouldn't be surprised if she can't pick up how I am feeling from this. Some sort of Telepathic Amazon Radio Transmitter."

Ma poured me some fresh cream. There were advantages to milking cows. "Diana is worried about you, and if she can sense how you are feeling from the other side of the world I think that is a good thing too."

As I treat myself to Mom and apple pie I wondered whether she was right.


	5. Chapter 5

Superman landed in the yard of his late friend, Clark Kent's boss, Perry White Editor in Chief of the Daily Planet. My Friend, my boss and colleague, and also someone I spent every single moment that we were together, in either guise, lying to about who I really was, but always for the best of reasons.

Like they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And it was hell that day, fire and yet more fire, consuming, killing.

If there was any justice in death, a noble man like Perry will be with the Angels.

I knocked on the glass patio doors.

Alice White turns and looks at me, she recognises the costume. Everyone does. My shield is one of the few logo's that gets instant world wide recognition, alongside Coca Cola and Mickey Mouse, drop me in the middle of the Jungle any Jungle and people know my emblem.

But to Alice White it means something else. I bring her back to the truth of that day.

"Superman." She mouths my name more out of shock than a true welcome. I can't blame her, the best I can say for myself is this visit is overdue, tardy of me. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner Mrs White." I say as she opens the door.

"Come in please, and it's Alice, you know it it's Alice." Alice doesn't cry, she's done her fair share of crying. Mom told me all about their phone calls.

I'm in Perry's front room. The walls have his pictures, Perry with everyone who is anyone, I count four Presidents, and of course I can see Lois and Clark.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to save him Alice."

"I know you would if you could." She replied. "They say it wasn't an ordinary bomb." She told me. "They say it was a miracle you – even you - managed to save anyone."

I nodded and kept my council. I couldn't admit I was in the building when it happened. Perhaps if I hadn't acted so mechanically, acting out of habit dropping into my costume, maybe those hundredths of a second could have made a difference? I shouldn't think like this, because every moment I spend in one place is at the expense of being somewhere else, and that means somewhere someone dies because I'm not there to save them. Superman's burden.

Yeah but this time it's different, it's personal. Perry was my friend. They were all my friends. My fist tightens.

Alice offers me coffee. I decline. I tell her how much I admired her husband. I almost make my excuses there and then, as soon as hear her footsteps, as soon as the rhythm of her heart comes into range. I don't, instead I take Alice Whites hand.

"You shouldn't be hard on yourself." She tells me. "You can't save everyone. Perry always said that about you."

When the door bell rings I tell her. "It's Lois."

Alice's face does the how do you know? - look followed by the oh my of course you're Superman look, in quick succession. "Poor girl, losing Clark like that. You know she is so strong, honestly she has been such a help to me." Tears brim in her eyes.

I nod. What can I say. A white lie of omission, that's my nod in this moment.

"And Martha Kent has called me. She is so strong, she has lost so much. First Jonathan and now Clark." Alice told me. "There is so much sadness in the world."

I nod again, not showing her the pain I feel, first pa and now my marriage both either side of New Krypton. I've had better times.

"Hey Aunt Alice?" The voice is a male belonging to Alice's and Perry's nephew.

"Richard. Lois. It's Superman."

"Superman." Lois says, her voice steady – almost emotionless. She has had plenty of practise at pretence.

Richard doesn't say anything.

I stand and nod. "Miss Lane, Mr White." I look at Richard, give him my best diplomat's smile. "I believe we met at the UNICEF function last year."

He nod's and we shake hands.

"Richard has been a great help, since Perry's passing, so much for me to do..."

"It is always good to be able to rely on family at time like this." I replied.

"Superman was just paying his respects." Alice tells her visitors.

"On account of not being at the memorial." Lois stated.

It was cold. Not so much the words, but the delivery, her body language was unmistakably clear. Richard winced, not much, unlike Lois he wasn't being obvious, rather Richard was being pretty smooth. Thing is I get to see those quick flashes of human expression, lies that mostly go unnoticed. Richard stepped closer to my wife, his hand moved, not much, but this said to me - I want to take you in hand. He was embarrassed for her and by her. I knew that feeling.

"This isn't Superman's fault. Not any of it." Richard said.

"I will find the person or persons responsible." I looked at Lois directly, and she looked at me, I searched for something – anything, but it wasn't there, that spark, that flame, not for me any way.

There followed one of those uncomfortable silences.

"I'm sure Superman has many important things he has to do." Richard said finally. He was trying, but he did not dispel any of the tension in the room. Richard looked at Lois, he was watching her too, but Richard had given me an out.

"Yes that is always the case." I agreed. "As it is now." I turned to Alice and told her that "I am very sorry for your loss." Looking at Richard and in Lois's direction I add. "For all your loss."

My hand was on the door as Lois said. "Wait! A word, please Superman – if I may."

She followed me into the yard. Sliding the door shut behind us. "What are you doing?" She demanded, keeping her voice low. Like I said – practise.

"Paying my respects."

"Keeping tabs?"

"No."

She looked mad, and she didn't believe me. "It has nothing to do with you."

I folded my arms. The sun caught the bracelet on my wrist. I hadn't been thinking about this trinket, Lois did that to me, messed with my mind or my emotions which then muddied my thoughts. The adamant metal ring had slipped from under my costume. Lois was staring at the engraved Athena's Eagle, Amazon craftsmanship.

She flushed red, angry and stared up at me accusingly. "What's this?" Lois pointed at my wrist. "What does this mean."

"It's a friendship bracelet."

Lois laughed quietly. She was still being discrete. I had to give her that, she was keeping my secret. "From Diana?" She snorted, quiet derision.

I looked into her violet eyes. "I know." I told her. Her hand clenched, and so did her jawline, I read the signs, I knew them well enough, right now she wanted to shout, and possibly hit me, but Lois wouldn't do that – not here, probably not ever. That would say I still care.

I spoke quietly. "I can smell him on your skin, the chemical signature, both your pheromone levels are heightened. I could smell you both coming up the path."

"Nothing is going on." She hissed. Her eyes flickered across to Richard, for her it was unconscious split second reaction, for me it was like a slow motion train wreck.

"Not yet." I replied.

"It has nothing to do with you." She told me again.

I just looked at her, my head so slightly to one side.

"And what you and the Millennial Virgin are doing isn't any of mine."

I frowned. Lois didn't see it.

"Actually I think this bracelet is magic." I told her, she looked back as much to say so? "I think it's the Amazon version of Prozac, I felt a lot better since she gave it to me. Less heartbroken."

"Good for you." Lois replied. "I'm sorry for being the villain in this." She said, and she I think she meant it. "I guess you can't get a pick me up at the chemist that works on Kryptonians."

"No." I wasn't going to make this any easier for her. "I'm glad you are keeping an eye on Alice." I told her."

Richard was looking at us.

"What are you going to tell them." I asked. I meant him, but I stepped back from that.

"Clark." She said.

"Yes."

Lois shook her head. "No I mean I'll tell we were talking about your old late friend."

"The old excuses are the best ones."

I turned to leave her, I wanted to ask her if she missed Clark Kent, but I didn't want to hear her answer. My cloak fluttered between us, like it had in the beginning, before I let her into the inside.

"Do you regret saving me now?" Lois asked me, I had begun to fly away, but I hung there briefly.

"Perry would not have thanked me if I had saved him before saving you."

"That wasn't what I meant."

"You'll make an excellent Editor in Chief of the Planet."

She said. "The Paper's still a mess. They needed someone to step into the role quickly. It's not permanent."

"Not yet." I said and this time I did leave.


	6. Chapter 6

I brought the truth of that awful day back to Perry's widow, now it's my duty to bring her justice.

Wind in my air, high above Metropolis, the sun washing over me. It is good to be alive, it's good to be me, despite all the crap going on, personally, and in the world at large, my tether, my connection to my home, it's vital and it's real.

"Kal."

"Kara."

We circle each other. My cousin Supergirl her hair a halo of blonde, spun white gold in the rays of Sol, red and blue, the colours of our house our alien heritage, for centuries an accidental prophecy, the children of the House of El, of the red sky of Krypton, would be reborn – replanted rising into the blue of sky of Earth, empowered by it's golden light.

Kara pauses, a couple of hundredths of a second pass, oh my word, something is out of place, she is holding me, a hundredths of a second later, tears, sadness. I thought we were past this.

"I'm much much better Kara, really I am."

"I know Kal. It's my fault."

"What's your fault?" I ask.

She tells me.

"Lana hit Lois." That was the short of it. The long story she repeated verbatim, functionally I might as well have had this conversation with a telepath. Talking to another sun charged Kryptonian is a unique experience.

And I mean properly sun charged, truly powered up Kryptonian - not your handful of days worth that the New Kryptonians enjoyed; which is more akin to the manic buzz Lois got after a sugar caffeine energy drink overdose. It takes time to receive a full solar charge, years to become as powerful as me, regardless of what you might have heard.

Kara had the advantage of being bathed in yellow light during her time in suspended animation, her long journey to Earth.

We were seeds, space an ocean whose dark waters had carried us to Earth, a fertile island, where we had taken root, and in her benevolent atmosphere we could grow, we could soar higher and higher, feeding from Sol's glorious life empowering energy. We might be aliens but Earth was where we were truly meant to be.

Here Kara had flowered, becoming beauty and purpose personified.

I was proud of my cousin.

"She stood up to me Kal." Kara said. "When I first heard Clark Kent was dead – really dead, and what that meant – I mean Lois's choice. Lana stood between me and the window and said "Kara you are not going anywhere, especially to someone who harbours a grudge against you, not when you are this mad." You know I could just stepped around her before she could blink."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I could see how angry and hurt Lana was, I realised she had a right to feel like that, she has known you so long, since you were a little boy, and if she could stop herself from getting involved, then I could too; Lana needed me with her – she told me how you needed time to grieve.

"Lana has talked to you about her and Pete."

"Yes, human relationships are complex things."

"I was angry with Lois. Very angry." Kara said. "But I dealt with it."

I was proud of Kara's strength.

Kara is explaining how angry she was, how crazy it was, Lois and Clark were the first real constant in her new life – her second life on Earth. A fixture, and after everything that has happened to Kara and me, our losses, our grief, Lois's decision has implications beyond her broken promises to me.

This made me wonder how Conner is coping. He is lucky, Kon-El has Cassie, who has Diana and her sisterhood of Amazons to mentor her, Lois had Sam Lane, hard ass; and Kara she has me.

"The temporary offices of the Planet, where Lois has been running things, I went there to talk with Lana as Linda Lang." Kara told me, her explanation was like listening to a radio play at many many times normal speed, but rather than a cast of actors, you have one mimic with near perfect voice and tone reproduction for each character involved, reading from a script provided by an eidetic memory, that's how Kara and I can talk. Only a handful of others can come close. Speed force gives you the – well speed, so the Flashes could follow, J'onn has pace and telepathy, and of course Diana is both fast enough and has perfect memory, maybe even some telepathic empathy thing too. She is magical after all.

Kara continues saying. "It was just me – Linda, a niece going to see her aunt-come-roomie, I was minding my own business, mainly staying out of Cat Grant's way, seeing how the Planet's Business Editor Lana Lang was coping, when Lois walks in with..."

"I know about Jason White."

Kara falls against my chest. "I'm sorry Kal. I asked her outright, forgetting myself, "who's this? Isn't it too soon to be dating?" - Lois wants a family." Kara told me.

It hit me hard, like blasting Omega beams. Kara felt it – saw it my eyes. She was doing her best, trying to be a grown up about this, and doing a pretty good job of it to.

Kara accurately repeated Lois's words. "I want children Linda, it might seem wrong to you – too soon after Clark, but I'm not getting any younger." Lois turned to Lana. "And we both know Clark couldn't have kids."

"Lana slapped Lois there and then. She called her "a callous selfish bitch, you knew what you were getting into with Clark, and you ran to him determined to win him, and to hell with everyone and everything else."

Lana. Wow. I thought.

Kara continued. "If Lois hadn't let Jason drag her away, things would have gotten ugly fast.

Kara blushed and confessed to me. "Kal I wasn't going to stand there and let Lois hit Lana back, Lois deserved that and more."

I didn't disagree. Bad of me perhaps, but I knew Lois's priorities had changed, she had left Clark, taken on the Editorship of the Planet, taken to Richard White. She was looking at middle age, and listening to her ticking biological clock. She had never held back once her mind was made up, Lois went all out to get exactly what she wanted.

"Lana turned to me and whispered. "I'm sorry Kara, you've got to be the grown up here. I can afford to lose control, because unlike you I can't accidentally slap the bitch dead."

I hold Kara's hands. "She has a point." I feel guilty my own pain hurt so many I care about it – all who care for me.

"Why Kal?" Kara asks. "Why did you bother - why get involved with Lois."

"There is a reason our fathers agreed that Earth was a suitable home, and it wasn't just Sol, there are other stars like her, it was because we share a common humanity with the people of Earth – Kon-El proves this."

"Yes he does." Kara agreed.

There was a more than a coincidental similarity between the humanoid races in our universe, even if we couldn't explain it.

She said to me. "But that wasn't what I asked. Lois is human, but not all humans are Lois."

"Okay." I admitted. "I loved her." Past tense. I was getting somewhere. "I was young, we both were, she was charismatic, clever, forthright, and I was caught up in the idea of being Metropolis Champion, and Lois seemed to embody everything I admired about this city."

"She never deserved you." Kara told me. "You are bigger than Metropolis."

I kissed her head.

"That's kind of you to say." I heard Lana in those words. "I guess Lois falls in the category of do as I say, not as I did."

Lana and Kara's shared apartment was quiet. Kara made us some tea, boiling the water herself – well you can guess how.

We sat a while talking, we'd been through so much in a short time since her arrival.

"Lois liked to think she grounded me."

"She did." Kara laughed. "What is it they say – tied you down, apron ropes?"

"Apron strings, and that's means tied to your mother." I told her.

"Same thing, according to Freud." Kara told me, but smiled as she corrected herself. "But Lois is not Martha."

I laughed, and it felt cleansing, I could see Lois's faults more clearly now I had stepped back, given myself that space.

I toyed with Diana's bracelet before realising my fingers were working the metal. "No Lois Lane is not Martha Kent; and she didn't ground me Kara, but I'm guilty of letting her think that she did, taking pride in this idea. I saw Lois needed to justify our relationship by giving it balance – making us equals in her own mind, where I was the alien god, she was my human anchor. Keeping me real connected to my humanity - but that isn't so."

"Martha and Jonathan did that you mean?"

"Yes – but more than that, my childhood, Lana and Pete, everything I did, every moment I lived, all the times before Lois. I mean for those first all important formative years as a kid, I didn't know I was anything else but an Earth born human, I grasped after a while that I was exceptional, but from the beginning I was Clark Kent, a farmers son."

"Who are you Kal? Clark or Superman?"

I laughed. "Well once upon time I was a boy called Clark Kent, who discovered he was adopted, a boy who once he got over the shock of that, wanted to learn about his birth parents, about our heritage."

"That is a very human thing to want to do." Kara smiled.

I said. "In hindsight I was lucky because my biological parents had left me a legacy, when I needed those answers they were there – or at least their holographic avatars were there for me. In short Kara I grew up. The boy Clark Kent eventually became the man – Superman."

"Clark or Kal?"

"My birth name is Kal-El. Mom called me Clark, and rightly so, I needed a human identity, a family's love.

"I own my heritage, both of them. To mom and Lana I will always be Clark, but Clark may as well be Junior or John-boy or similar, it's my boyhood identity, it's not who I have become.

"Kara, Clark Kent was a child, I see that more clearly now than ever, now in the wake of Lois's decision, I was someone who had to grow up, and this has bearing for you cousin, I mean you can learn from me by not repeating my mistakes, bluntly look at Conner."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm saying that we as Kryptonians can function as adult humans on Earth long before our intellectual and emotional self has achieved what Kryptonian society would regard as adulthood."  
"But Connor is part human."

"Which is why I suppose he has finally found Cassie." I told her. "He has already made a more adult choice than I was able to do at his age. He has come a long way, and I'm proud of him."

She looked at me, glancing at the Amazon crafted bracelet. Having trained on Themyscira she understood their place on Earth - Gaia's daughters unique status – a heritage Cassie as Wonder Girl enjoyed.

"And what now? Are you going to stay in Kansas?"

"The farm will always be home."

"So no then." She called me out, poking my side. We laughed.

I shrugged. "For the first time since I walked around the world as a boy, I can say I don't know what tomorrow will bring, for years it's been the same job, the same faces, the same story over and over again. Now I have a new beginning."

"A second chance at life?"

"Yes Kara." I replied knowing she understood that more keenly than most, I added with a wide smile. "A chance to live life to the full."


	7. Chapter 7

Kal is staring at me, I defiantly meet him. "Have I offended you?" I ask him.

"No Diana." He replies, his smile lights up the lines around his eyes, a boyish grin full of confidence and mischief.

I smile back, and I dazzle him. I don't mean too, he hides it well, but he can't hide his feelings from me, not any more.

I remember this Superman, the same smile met me in the night sky so many moons ago; when we were both new to the world in our costumes. A night not unlike this one. Moments later he kissed me. He wasn't ready then, and he's not ready now.

The difference is he's old enough, wise enough to know.

Yet still as we hover together, he comes close enough to make me wonder - would I run from his lips this time?

"I should thank you." He tells me, holding out his left wrist where I had placed the Amazon bracelet. That had been two months ago.

"When are you going to get some sleep?"

Below Metropolis hums with energy.

"The city never sleeps." He says. "And day rules the other side of the world."

"The Earth never sleeps." I say, am I finishing his sentences now?

"When are you going to get some sleep?" I ask him again.

"When I'm dead. I'll sleep when I'm dead." His dry smile makes me wonder whether he means it.

"Which could be sooner than later if you don't take to dream." I told him lacing my voice with as much concern as I could to wash away the irritation I felt at him, because I was afraid. Afraid for him, afraid that I cared too much – who was I trying to kid.

"Normally I don't get to thank people who use magic on me." Kal chuckled as he evaded me.

"Normally I don't argue with people who are doing so much." I don't say too much, how could I criticise a man who had spent the last weeks saving lives without a moment's respite, ever moving never stopping; but I do.

"Even Superman needs to dream Kal."

I know Kal suspects my gift is more than meets the eye, and he's right, a little magic between friends was called for. I wasn't going to let Lois Lane cripple the Last Son of Krypton. What he doesn't know is how that magic works, that the bracelet was forged by Io, Theymscira's Blacksmith with a lock of my hair embedded within it, his pain and grief is channelled to me and so I am able to shoulder some of this burden even when I am world away. Of course right now I am inches away and closing.

The bracelet is a two way street, whether he senses it or not.

"Kal I know more than you realise."

He smiles. "This bracelet links us doesn't it?"

I nod.

"I can feel you here, with one hand he touches his chest. Diana I'm feeling mighty confused by it." He confesses. Kal touches my left breast, his finger brushed the gold of my costume.

"You know?"

He nods.

I reach under my bodice and withdraw a disc, it bears his crest. Made of the same metal as the bracelet, it had been the centre of a circle of beaten adamant, the outer ring had been cut away turned into token I had given him. "I have worn this next to my heart. Ever since..."

"You came to me at the Fortress." He finished my sentence.

"Yes." I agreed slipping the disc back against my skin.

"Then you know, I mean you must have sensed how liberating the last weeks have been, to work unhindered?"

"And yet you return to Metropolis, and to Smallville." I tell him. "I feel their pull upon your human heart more strongly than the World's troubles plague your conscience."

"Yes." He agrees. "Just like our friendship Diana." He can still surprise me. Good, and more his eyes don't fight me. "He shrugs and smiles showing me my bracelet on his wrist once more. "If only you could come up with a band aid against Kryptonite?"

If I could, I would. "Promise me you'll slow down, stop trying to lose yourself in work."

"I promise. Where are you taking me?" He asks.

I hadn't expected that. Did Superman know how fun by himself – had Lois been at the centre of his free time for that long? The sense of Kal's dilemma washed over me, rising from my subconscious, always running between Clark Kent Reporter, Clark Kent Husband, and Clark Kent son; all the time a disaster waited to happen, a job for Superman, a call to drop everything and help.

The Watch Tower interrupts both our thoughts, the alarm an unique clarion sound is aimed directly at us. Any thoughts of frivolity have to be pushed to one side.

We join arms and pour on the power, pushing each other using our complimentary power, hitting supersonic, hypersonic, exiting the atmosphere, a short hop through the vacuum of space, before descending to Gotham. He holds my waist as I cross my bracelets – my shield, and we light up the night sky, a ball of fire - before hitting the brakes dropping from the sky.

Down town Gotham looks like the Earth has moved. It could be another big quake, but I know it isn't. Gas tanks explode as cars roll along the streets like billiard balls.

It's a hell storm of destruction.

Batman a few weeks ago declared he was taking a sabbatical from the League. It's not unusual for Bruce to step back for his own reasons, usually something bad is going down in Gotham, and usually the League let's Batman deal with it. He'll ask for help if and when he thinks he needs it, and Bruce works very hard not to need help outside of his 'family.'

But it's been two months, and the chatter has me worried.

Some big name criminals with links to Gotham have been found dead, not just dead but taken apart, literally, if there is another vigilante working in his city then they are using dubious methods.

What really troubles me is Bruce is not answering his numbers, he hasn't been seen around town during the day triggering gossip columnists to speculate.

The manor is shut down, as if he is out of town, no sign of life at the Wayne Towers penthouse.

So it's just down to my hunters eye to track the Batman.

I figure with this much going down in his city Bruce has to be close by.

"What are those things?" Superman asks.

"Stymphalian Vultures." I said instinctively recognising the aura of these man eating birds, pets of Ares, but Ares is among the dead in a netherworld of the gods, could another being, a powerful magician like Circe have summoned these creatures of metal and magic – taking advantage of Ares discorporate existence to steal his thunder?

"They look like bats to me."

I look again, it's impossible to deny, as the monster spits adamant claws from it wings with the accuracy and fire rate of a modern machine gun, I take that on. Only my bracelets are hard enough to deflect these magical projectiles.

Superman arches over me, and punches the metal creature into the pavement. It cracks the ground, and flails, his heat vision fuses the metal to the road.

"That's the kind of magic I know too well." He says.

He is right. Powerful magic is at work tonight.

"Not all magic is bad." I reply.

"You're magic." He says as we drop to the ground.

The Stymphalian bats circle but they leave us alone, I don't like this, it feels wrong. Call it feminine intuition.

I see Waylon Jones emerge from the black smoke and wreckage in the street. Killer Croc runs through the carnage like a beast possessed. I don't hesitate, my Lasso curves around Waylon Jones's trailing foot and I yank him to the ground. Killer Croc is all that, green scaly weapon resistant hide, mouth full of dagger teeth, and an attitude to match. A Metahuman that channels his inner reptile.

Thankfully my god mother is Artemis for my hunter's eye and with the gifts at my disposal I'm confident I'll find answers.

"What is going on." Superman asks.

He can see the terror on Waylon's face. That's pretty bad in itself. I can feel the terror in his soul, and that's another order of wrong.

I see Batman, he is hunched above in the shadows, and Bruce has gone all medieval on us, his suit looks like armour, grey and black, a Dark Knight in the middle of a war.

"What has Bruce been holding back from us?" Kal is worried about Batman. He should be.

Killer Croc is more animal than man, as the transformation gradually continues the more reptilian he becomes. It is instinct more than intellect that senses my confusion, and uses it to slip his foot free of my Lasso.

This is Bruce I tell myself, and I give the Batman the benefit of doubt.

Waylon spins unsure where to run, who to fight. Batman moves. Correction - I don't see him move. One moment he is hunkered down perched on top of an overturned bus, next he is beside Killer Croc.

Superman understands now what I saw in Waylon's mind, the impossible truth. No human can move like that, but Bruce moves or more accurately he doesn't – teleportation; and that's high grade magic or even fancier technology. No wonder Killer Croc is petrified.

Waylon strikes hard, but Batman is ready, catching Killer Croc's fist in his hand, stopping the blow mid punch, which is very wrong, Croc can bench a bus, as strong as Bruce is, this is inhuman.

He's fast, his free hand counter punches, I see this armour he sports has his trademark gauntlets with their distinctive three flanges. These are different. Metallic and sharp, they flash, clicking with mechanical efficiency, first one offsets, then the other, then the third, arching out, three metal hooked blades. As Batman pulls Killer Croc towards him he tears Waylon's arm from it's socket, the knives at his wrist eviscerate Killer Croc, as Waylon jaw shatters on Batman's armoured helm, blood and teeth fly.

"No." Superman shouts at the thing that cannot be Bruce, it's attention shifts from Croc to us.

"Bruce. Stop." Kal begs.

Like Kal I see Bruce's chin, the line of his lips, what kind of man armours every inch of himself but leaves his mouth exposed? The thing that isn't Bruce smiles.

I sense Superman's confusion, I share it, this man is in every visible way Bruce, I am sure Superman can match the scars, both on the outside of him and the inside. This is Bruce Wayne's body.

I refuse to believe this can be Batman's mind and soul.

This Batman-thing is next to Kal. Hera help me! The creature is fast. Even the Flash has to move his feet. Superman staggers back. What has the Batman-thing done to Kal?

I see it. Stuck to his chest in the middle of his S shield, over his heart, the fat stubby device reminds me of an adrenaline pen. The green glow tells me it's not adrenaline Bruce has just pumped into Superman.

No time to hesitate. I have to act. I can't worry about my best friend now, my other friend is trying to kill him, and I think I'm going to be next; and I can't save anyone if I am dead.

The Lasso floats through the air. The thing that can't be Bruce but is Bruce, catches the golden cord in his hand.

His identity is revealed.

The horror of what he is flows through me, a wave of recognition as his ghost reaches out to me from the meat and bones of Bruce Wayne.

"Only a god could do that." I spat. Looking at Ares as he held my Lasso in his hand.

Bruce's voice laughs at me, but not his soul. His eyes burn red.


	8. Chapter 8

I'm down and it hurts. I can't understand how Bruce could do this to me. How did he get so quick, so strong, so fast.

The why doesn't make sense until I hear his voice speaking another beings thoughts.

Kryptonite delivered directly to bloodstream, I'm poisoned and worse than powerless. I knew Bruce had a weapon that could take me down, I didn't know the details, I didn't want to. I trusted him, we both recognised the danger a rogue hero poses, especially one as powerful as me. Our bargain was simple if I was taken over or just plain mad and dangerous, he would take me down.

After the terrible things that happened to Diana and the League, after Max Lord made me hurt so many, we needed something else, simple Kryptonite wasn't going to be enough. Now I knew what Wayne Tech had come up with.

I'm teetering on the edge of conciousness, I've got to fight it, forget the pain, remember Doomsday, channel the rage, push myself.

I can hear them talking, I find the strength to turn my head, slow, agonisingly slow, slow even by human standards.

"How can this be possible?" Diana demands.

The thing that isn't Bruce laughs. "You made it possible child of Themyscira, unique daughter of the Amazon's - many times blessed by the gods."

Diana's face is mask of shock and anger. The creature has her Lasso in his hand, she can see into his soul, the veracity of his claims. She doesn't challenge him. It is the truth.

"How?" She spits the question with loathing I didn't imagine Diana could feel.

"Your ability to love and be loved is the gift of your god mother Aphrodite.

"Aphrodite whom I first loved, the goddess of love and beauty bore me children, a son Eros the god of desire among them, did you think my power was absent in you, that in the gift of your god mother Aphrodite there was not also little of me?"

"You cursed me Ares?" Wonder Woman whispers, my heart is agony, this is a heart attack, dammit, I am having a cardiac arrest.

Ares spoke with Bruce's lofty voice. "Of course as those self important goddesses blessed you, so my curse rode to you from the very bosom of Aphrodite, as soon as desire, as Eros entered your heart, simply when your lips touch a man, it is the magic of desires kiss that seals their fate. They are forever linked to me.

"You chose such pedestrian men, such as the mortal Tom Tresser, and then Batman, but the one I wanted – the Kryptonian, you refused to desire. But I was an eternal god, and patience was my gift.

"Then you killed my mortal form. Isolated in frustration in the netherworld of death my godly form broken by you, I gathered my strength and decided to be patient no longer.

"I sent my agent to kill the people Superman loved, in the hope he would turn to you at last.

"But still you danced around each other, never admitting your feelings, so my patience exhausted, I chose the strongest of your past suitors, the Batman."

"What have you done to him?" Diana growled.

"Imagine my joy when I found out what he was."

"What do you mean..." Diana gasped, she fell to her knees.

"You see it don't you child, the power, the power of the bat-god? Long before I was a god of war, and then in these modern times conflict; before written history I was the god of the fight. The god of the blood lust of battle, whether between men, between tribes, where ever there was fist and stone wielded in anger – there was Ares.

"And in this mortal – this Batman, I found all those things, a war against crime, fought with hand and tool, breaking flesh and bone; and above all Batman broke their will. Batman - a man worshipped as a god by a horde of adolescent boys who long to possess his strengths, and his toys."

"You fed on him." Diana growled. "Like a vampire you drank from the well of his heroism and his fame."

"His legend as a monster was like a fine wine to me, his love of you, and your love for him, desires kiss you never shared with Superman, meant I could take him. His power as the bat-god meant I could manifest the fullness of my godly magic in his form, and make it my own.

"I have never been as powerful as I am now – not since the glory days of Olympus."

"You monster."

"Now I can fulfil my dearest wish, I will end the Amazon's champion, and with your death the Amazon's themselves, I will kill every last one of them."

"Never!"

"You realise this friend of yours even has a strategy to defeat Themyscira?"

"No!"

"I will kill every hero in your Justice League, I have a plan ready made in this mind to end the lives of each one of your friends."

Wonder Woman leaps and Ares the Bat-god and moves, or steps - rather teleports to one side, his blades flash slicing into her flesh like nothing I could ever imagine, some evil mix of magic and godly power with technological prowess.

Diana slumps bleeding to the pavement, he hands grasp her belly holding her intestines back from the rip in the muscle.

Ares the Bat-god stands above her, his wrist swords extended six jagged blades ready to fall, to execute my dearest and loyalist friend.

I am Superman, I might be down but I am not out.

I summon my strength, all I have, all that I am, I stare into mind of Bruce Wayne, to a tiny insert at the base of his brain. We had a pact Bruce and I, he would stop me if any one ever took control of my body again as Max Lord had done. I promised in turn to stop the Batman if the situation arose for him.

I gave Bruce the Kryptonite, he gave me a kill switch, something unique tailored to my abilities.

I have to make a decision, and I have to make it now; Bruce or Diana.

I make it. In a sea of agony and pain, all that I have left acts.

My heat vision flashes, aimed by my x-ray like sight, I superheat the nodule of metal in Bruce's head, it triggers the device, immediately Bruce's brain stem switches off, his body staggers, but it does not fall.

Whatever ghost of the god Ares that possesses him holds on, the flesh teeters, the ghost struggles, a last gasp bursts from the Batman's lips and he falls, Ares somehow hangs on and uses deadman's weight to drive his magic forged blades into the kneeling broken body of Wonder Woman.

I gasp, using my vision powers was too much, I knew that when I made my decision. Now as I slip away, unconsciousness creeps in, the last thing I see is the pavement red with Amazon blood. I see my two best friends slumped on the ground, wrapped together in a travesty of an embrace, together in death.

I feel the green Kryptonite pulsing through my veins and I know my last energy is spent, I have stopped Bruce, but at an unimaginable cost. Bruce is dead, Diana is dead, and I am joining them, it's the least I can do.


	9. Chapter 9

J'onn is massaging my heart. His hands inside my chest, he works the muscle, and I am awake but only just. The Martian Man Hunter, an alien, but not like me, he can shape shift, although I see him in his preferred alien green hue. J'onn can pass through solid objects bodily, and it's this ability he is using now to enter my chest, to kick start my heart.

The next thing I remember is being bathed in light. I am in the Justice Leagues Watch Tower. Orbiting high above the Earth. Here Sol's purer rays wash over me.

I hurt, but I am metabolising the Kyrptonite, excreting the poison from my system, organs teeter and fail, but rebuild themselves. I ride on a wave agony and ecstasy as the Sun feeds me, and the Kryptonite fights to the last to kill me.

Slowly I pull back from the brink. I've been dead before, I've been poisoned by green K before, I know what it feels like. I know what it costs to come home.

"Kal, please fight, you have to want this." Kara begs me. I feel her tears.

They take it turns. I feel the kiss of Zatana's magic, as she urges me to live. Top hat and tails, plunging neckline coupled with hotpants and fishnets is her chosen couture.

"He has lost heart." She tells them.

"Clark." I hear her voice, strong and clear. Urging me to live. There are no tears.

"Mom." I open my eyes, once more I see.

"Clark." This time there is only joy and only now does my mother cry.

"Don't." I say wiping her tears.

"I'm so happy you are still here." She tells me.

"Diana?" I ask.

Mom shakes her head. I close my eyes. Mom takes my hand.

Kara says. "Kal it's so good you are back with us."

I smile, hoping she believes it, I'm hoping I believe it. "It takes more than an angry Bat-god of War to kill me."

I can see the league around me.

"You are still weak." Doctor Midnite tells me. Pieter Cross is acting in his role of doctor to the Metahuman community, he's more comfortable as a hero in his white coat than in spandex.

"My weak is good enough for most people." I answer, swinging my legs to the floor.

"Clark." My mother protests.

"Come on big guy." Hal Jordan tells me. "Don't be a lousy patient."

"If you are all here, whose taking care of things?" I ask. I begin checking myself over, simple memory tests, tensing muscles in series. Mom has seen this before, others here haven't, waves cross my skin as I tense and relax. I tense again. My eyes check over the Satellite. I'm not the only patient the Doctor has under his care. "Is that Bruce?"

"Yes." Midnite answers. I stand, and thankfully Kara is beside me helping me move, she basically flies or perhaps I should say glides us across the Watchtower infirmary, across to Bruce.

"He's alive." I say, the beat of his heart is made visible by the machines monitoring his condition. No. I correct myself, the life support that keeps him going.

"Alive, but unconscious." Doctor Midnite confirms. "According to his instructions we are keeping him that way, at least until we can be certain reconnecting his mind won't enable Ares to repeat his possession trick."

This was a great relief, compensation coming so soon after learning Diana hadn't made it.

Bruce of course knew the risks. This was his device, and his plan, it was meant to mimic brain death without actually killing the mind, "with luck" he had told me "it will work, that is I won't be dead, really dead." And with even more luck Bruce hoped his mind would come back with his personality and memories intact.

I chose not to dwell on the alternative. This amounted to a test run. I would have said the results were in the lap of the gods, but I won't.

"How are you making sure that Ares won't come back for a repeat performance?"

"We're taking outside help." Zatana told me. Tipping her Top Hat to another jaunty angle. "There are specialists who deal with this kind of magic."

"Themyscira." I said.

She nodded. "The Amazon's have a particular interest in ensuring Ares remains caged, given what he has done."

"I guess they took Diana's body home?"

"Yes Kal." Kara told me, her arms around me were reassuring.

I looked at her.

"I know cousin." She replied.

Kara didn't push it too hard, a full ten minutes to the Sun, this close I could feel the undiluted heat and power of the nuclear fusion furnace. This close the Adamant bracelet around my wrist glowed red hot. I bathed in the rays from Sol. I felt my body absorb the suns power, years of exposure gave me deeper resources of power, and an ability to recharge them more quickly.

Thirty minutes later Kara and I reached Themyscira.

Hippolyta greets us. She hugged Kara who had trained here among the Amazons and had their special affection. The Amazon Queen has adopted mourning dress, and her robes are black. I know that the Island is in mourning, Diana was both a child and sister to them all.

Hyppolyta leads us to where her daughter's body lies.

The Temple Shrine stands on hill above the Palace, and there is an alter in the centre of the sacred space. The Temple is open on all sides, with the roof supported by columns, beyond I can see the bluest of seas. I am struck by scent of incense and the sound of a melodic melancholy chant. A choir of Amazon's whose pure voices sang their lament for the dead.

"We had a child as the sun, and now that our child is obscured. We her sisters, are without light. Our child was a bright star, but now she is hidden, and the gloom of night envelops us, her Sisters. Our child was light to us, but she is quenched, and now we walk in darkness."

Diana lies on the alter, in the midst of them all, perfection in death. Her face is visible her body covered by a shroud, her feet exposed, her skin is as marble, hard like the stone.

I look to her Mother. Hippolyta answers my unspoken question, confusion she can read in my face. The Queen's eyes fill with tears. "She was called forth – made alive from clay, and now in death she is clay once more."

I reached out and brushed her cheek. It was cold, smooth, like a statue.

Hippolyta turned to me. "Ares killed her as only a god in the fullness of his power could, he drove her Psyche - her spirit to the underworld, to Hades."

"Your Majesty, I understand the principles of your faith."

"Superman I speak of things that are far beyond principles, but are a sacred trust." The Queen reached for the shroud that covered her daughters form drawing it down so it revealed her breasts, I felt uncomfortable, not because of her nudity, the Amazons were not concerned by that, but I already knew what she wished me to see. I had scanned Diana looking for life.

There fixed to her flawless marble body, was a round adamant disc, one that bore my mark, my S shield. "We cannot remove it, and I will not damage my child to see it taken."

"I don't know what to say."  
"She loved you." Hippolyta wept. "She always loved you, and now in death she will bear the love forever."

"I loved her." I said.

"Too late Kryptonian." Hyppolyta snapped. "Had it been one of us, had Diana's last thoughts been of me then there might be a way, but how can we send you through Dooms Door?"

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked. "What kind of way - a way to bring her back?"

"You are man, an alien man, what do you know of the Amazon's, of Hades realm?" The Queen demanded of me.

"I know all that there is to be read." I answered truthfully. I am a quick reader.

"Little and not enough, the musings of men long dead." Hippolyta replied dismissing me. "I am needed elsewhere. Mourn here as you must. I let you come here for her sake, because Kryptonian she loved you more than any of us knew, and if her last thought was of you, then you should sing a lament for her."

She paused before my cousin. "Kara, sister to Themyscira, you will always be welcome among the Amazons." Hippolyta turned and left the Temple.

I covered Diana's modesty, I am after all Jonathan Kent's son.

"Diana I wish I had been faster, better, quicker." Tears welled in my eyes. I cried for her, all she had been, and all she should have been.

I listened to Kara's heartbeat, she left me, pursuing Hippolyta. I feared she might have angry words for the Queen, but as I wept I was past caring.

A voice calls out to Kara from the shadows. "Does he truly love her?" An Amazon who I did not recognise. She had a rich voice, one that oddly disturbed me.

"Yes of course. My Cousin said so, and he never lies." Kara answers.

"Then there is perhaps hope. Take me to him."

"Who are you?"

"Kara of Krypton hear me. If you wish to see your cousin whole, and Diana returned to you take my hand, and lead me to him."

I hear the strangest of winds whistle around the Shrine. Raising my head I see Kara leading a woman by the hand.

Her robes are like the shadows themselves. I have seen enough magic now to recognise a being of power, and this woman was all of that, and perhaps more.

"Hectate." She said. "You will know me by this name."

"The goddess of Magic." I whispered. She nodded.

"If you truly loved her, you alone can save her, since you were her dying thought, your safety, your life was the last thing Diana considered."

"I will move heaven and earth if I must."

"You are powerful Kal-El of Krypton, but where I am going to send you your powers will mean nothing."

"Why? Why would you do this?" I asked wary of magic and those that used it.

She smiled and brushed my cheek with her hand, I realised I was still knelt beside Diana, looking up at Hectate. I stood, and asked again. "Why should I trust Olympus - when the gods, when Ares did this?"

Hectate's eyes burned like fire. "I am older than Olympus, I was ancient when Zeus was a whelp, I am from the most ancient of times. I do not favour Ares, or care for Athena and her sorority of goddesses in particular, rather my interest is in maintaining balance, ensuring the future of our kind and for this reason Diana can not lay dead, not forever."

"Tell me what I must do, and I will do it."

"You say that without knowing what I will ask of you."

"Diana is beyond price."

"I have your price Kal-El." She extended her hand, and drops a coin into my hand.

I look at it ancient patina, marked with an anchor. "Charon's Obol."

"What is it Kal?" Kara asks me.

"It is the price of the Ferryman, the price of a journey across the river Styx."

"I don't understand."

"Hades the realm of the dead, is reached by crossing a magical river, tradition tells you pay the ferryman coin for the ride to the other side."

Kara shook her head. She still wrestled with magic, it was harder still for her, so steeped in the mathematical certainties of Kryptonian science. I had learned to be more open minded, or perhaps magic had bludgeoned an opening, either way I was going ready or not.

"Surely you'll need a coin to get back?" Kara asks.

"She is a wise as she is beautiful." Hectate told me.

I stared at the single Obol and back to her face. Her eyes were the deepest blue I had every witnessed.

"That Obol my child is be to found within Hades."

"And where will I find Diana, and this coin?" I ask.

Hectate shrugged. "I never promised it would be easy."

I look again at the coin.

"My magic can take you to the river Styx – the portal to the underworld is here in Themyscira."

"Then we are wasting time."

"Kal!" Kara exclaimed. "Magic can kill you, at least we know it's possible to cure Kryptonite poisoning." She paused. Adding with defeat in her voice. "I don't know about this."

She stared at me angrily. "I've lost you twice, not again."

"Twice?" I said. "You weren't here when Doomsday..."

"No Lois crushed your heart, then Ares poisoned it."

"I have to go." I said.

Hectate looked at me expectantly. "Simply close your hand around Charon's Obol Kal-El and you shall stand beside the waters of the Styx."

I looked at my cousin, despite her protests she understood me, maybe not the magic of this other world, but me, for sure – I could see that much understanding and love in her eyes. Kara embraced me. I held her close. "Tell the Queen what I am doing, tell her I will do my utmost to get Diana back."

"I will." Kara choked back tears.

We parted and as I closed my fingers around the ancient coin I said. "And tell my Mom. Tell her I'll be back."


	10. Chapter 10

Hectate's magic crackled around me. Was I being foolhardy? Was I dashing in where angels fear to tread? Probably. Was Hectate's agenda one I could trust? Frankly I didn't know, if I was honest I had very mixed feelings about the gods of Olympus mainly because of the mixed messages their choices and actions sent. However the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or as Churchill colourfully said "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Of course the invader of moment, the interloper into Hades realm was me, and come hell or high water I meant to bring Diana back to the land of the living.

As the mystical beat of the portal Hectate's magic cast around me slowed, the twirling kaleidoscope of colours faded to grey. I now felt ground under my feet, as the portal closes it is like having the wind knocked out of me, and I collapse stunned to my knees. The pebble sand is harsh beneath me, hard, sharp and painful.

Pain is something I get to feel infrequently. I've been hurt enough times to know I don't like it. Doomsday beat me to a very real approximation of death. Here and now in this other place it is as Hectate predicted, I am mortal. Perhaps this is a pure magic realm. It's an about turn, because in the world of the dead, a realm of spirit, apparently Superman is just a man. I suppose that is price of my hubris, my presumption that I could cross over alive into deaths realm.

I catch my breath, and rise. Beyond the sharp sand and rocks a turbulent river flows, a churning morass of dark water lit with silver white froth as it crashes together like writing serpents. Above me the sky glitters with golden stars, and ruby, emerald and sapphire planets, the darkness kisses the desert beyond the river, and between is an expanse of lifeless rock and sands, coloured from red to brown through to pink and white.

I leap forward, and find the limit of my strength and it is very human.

The river is broad and wide as it is rapid and angry. Jutting out into the dark waters is a jetty, beside this a boat is moored, and standing with this is a rough unkempt Athenian seaman dressed in deep earth red, a wide belt around his middle. His beard is dirty and long, his face gaunt and lined, aged but not ancient. In his right hand Charon the Syx's ferry man holds a punting pole, with which he propels the boat, as I approach Charon he extends his left hand.

"Lonely I stand beside this river." His fingers twitch to encourage me to give up my coin. "And then comes a mortal alive and not dead seeking to enter the world of the dead." Charon's eyes burn like hollow furnaces of fire.

My own fingers press the Obol to my palm. I am fearful and almost unwilling to give it up, something deep within me does not want to cross the river, perhaps it is simply I want to live. I give up the coin into his calloused hand, Charon grasps it and where it goes I can't tell, he extends his empty hand like a magicians reveal at the end of his trick, but the ferry man simply bids me enter his boat.

I step in the wooden craft, and sit at the bow, Charon at the prow, releases the boat onto the water, and with mechanical efficiency the ferry man takes me across the river.

"You mean to tread where mortal man may not go, you are a bold one, my strange visitor from another world." Charon voice rasps, hard and clear above the roar of the water.

"What advice have you ferry man?" I ask him.

"It is too late to turn back, and that is the only advice I have for the living who dare to enter deaths realm."

Charon's pole slipped back and forth in his hand as the boat ran straight and true cutting an impossible course, magically he guided the ferry across the white froth cresting the twisting waves of the dark waters.

I say as I sight the other side. "Who rules Hades's Realm?"

"Never has the land of dead been so. No one rules here, and so every ghost and shade is King."

I wondered what kind of anarchy I would find on the other side. Hades was gone usurped by Ares, who in turn died at Diana's hand, as much as god may die, banished beyond Olympus, only to return in Bruce's body to fall once again back to that place. Now it would seem no one held sway over the realm of the dead.

Orpheus had pleaded his case before the underworlds god Hades and his Queen Persephone, for the ghost of his dead love Eurydice, would the lack of government make my task here harder or easier? Would I snatch Diana back more easily because there was no King to bargain with, to make conditions? Or without a ruler would the way home be barred to me – was this Hectate's true intention? Only time would tell I reflected as the sharp sand and gravel of the opposing bank of the Styx bit into the boat.

Charon directed me to leave his ferry, and with his fearsome eyes burning into mine I leapt into the shallows at the rivers edge. The dark waters seemed to boil around me, and I stumbled and fell into them, it was if a thousand tiny hands pulled me down, and the froth washed over me.

Charon's laugh echoed even through the roar of the river, even the water itself. "Hades does not welcome a living soul to it's shores."

I taste water, and bite down, mastering my desire to gasp for air, and dig my hands into the dirt, my limbs scramble, then my right finds the solidity of rock. I drag myself forward, the Styx pulls me back, I struggle, finding a foot hold, I at last crawl spitting water and rage onto the rocks, staggering forward I find cold sands and lay there for a moment catching my breath.

Wet, cold, my hands sting, grazed by my struggle to escape the unnatural waters of the Styx. Slowly I sit up, glad the unique alien fabric of my costume resists water, I run my hands through my wet hair, which does not. Around me grey mists swirl, shadows of white and dark, blurring my vision and obscuring the tortuous shapes of the wind shaped rocks. From this tumult a shade arises. My heart beats faster, I roll onto my knee, ready to fight.

"Pa?" I gasp. His familiar face welcome colour in the grey wisps.

"Hello son."

"How...?"

"Special dispensation from the management."

I frown deeply, and rise to face him. "This is Hades, the Greek underworld – the kingdom of the dead?"

"And I by rights, you're thinking I should be in the Kingdom of Heaven?"

"Yes..." My voice tails off into silence, he stands before me as he did in life, his blue jeans and checked shirt as much a uniform as my own.

"Look around you Clark." Pa says to me, his hand gesturing to and fro, a familiar gesture that distils my emotions. I trade surprise and disbelief, for equal measures of joy and grief. Jonathan Kent's loss is still raw for me.

Pa asks me. "Son do you Remember the parable of Lazarus and the rich man?"

"Sure I do." I offer a summation. "The rich man was selfish and treat the poor beggar Lazarus badly, they both died, then the rich man looked up from hell and saw Lazarus in the bosom of their ancestor Abraham."

"What does that tell you?"

"That Heaven and Hell aren't that far apart?"

Pa laughed. "True enough, Clark, true enough, but that isn't the whole story."

"Pa is this really you?" I dispense with game playing. He smiles in away I remember all too clearly. Jonathan Kent winks at me, an expression I had taken and made my own. My heart recognised my adoptive father, even if my head struggled to do so.  
Pa then said. "The rich man saw hell – he saw into heaven, he saw Abraham, and Lazarus, but someone important missing from this picture."

I thought about the story for a moment, rehearsing the players, and then it struck me.

"God?" I answered. "The rich man can see into heaven, but he doesn't see God."

"Son if the rich man didn't know God when he was alive he sure couldn't expect to recognise God when he was dead. Simply he couldn't see the wood for the trees."

"You're saying what I see here in this place of spirits is determined by my the limits of my knowledge?"

"Of course, we paint heaven and hell ourselves, build our own reward and punishment by thoughts words and deeds."

I cut the chase. I hoped this ghost could answer me, I hoped this wasn't a cruel trick of this realm of the dead.

"How do I find Diana?"

"By recognising her Clark."

"How?"  
"Follow your heart Son."

Then a violent wind rushed past us, and my eyes closed against the rain of dry dust and sand, when I opened them Pa was gone. I shook my head in wonder and disbelief, and yet I hoped, and yes I prayed. It was then I heard the clash of steel upon steel.


	11. Chapter 11

Life as an Amazon prepares each of us for a warriors death. Among my earliest memories are of the feast days that remembered our past heroes, the hauntingly beautiful laments sung for the fallen, the reverence my sisters held for those who had crossed over the Styx, who had died a honourable death. Immortality is relative, death stalks us all.

Now I am here, and Hades has become a world that I could not dare imagine. Perhaps this is my own doing, when I slew Ares, the Usurper of Hades Realm, I took from the underworld it's ruler, and now without a guiding hand there can only be chaos, and I fear I am in a hell of my own making.

The pink sands around me are white with bones, and in the midst of them is a circle pounded hard by the feet of warriors.

My opponent stands before me, her armour is bronze and gold, her helm is the visage of death. I am born to fight and trained to make war; thought word and deed are a martial art by which each Amazon lives, and now I ask the mists of Hades, am I in death to exist always by the sword?

She strikes at me with animal ferocity, her blade like lightening in the darkness, her shield echoes like thunder when she blocks my counter strikes. I am unlike her, because even in death, in Hades, I stand as my peoples Champion – as Wonder Woman, my shields are my bracelets, my lasso is at my waist, but my sword is stolen, plucked from amongst the skeletal remains that lay around us in sand.

Even now I try and reason with her.

"Sister why are we fighting? Sister why do you hate me so? Sister let us stop this, speak your complaint to me?"

But my antagonist does not answer, nothing comes from her mouth, her lips hidden behind the gilded skull of her helmet, instead she drives me back her steel doing all her talking for her, it shouts to me of hatreds anger.

I plead mechanically, she fights like one possessed, I can only defend against her berserker rage while my entreaties for peace go unheard. Even as fight her I seek to make peace. Such is the contradiction at the heart of me.

Here on the sand we bleed, her and I, blades find skin, bringing forth a red testament to violence, rain on dry ground that has never seen moisture save blood, but I add my tears to the mix. Neither of us can break the other, my defence holds, her attack is tireless, my counter strikes are never deadly, hers seek my life, we are both unwilling to change our agenda, and a equilibrium is reached, an endless cacophony of steel crashing against steel.

I hear his voice. "Diana." I cannot believe it. He flies through the air from above, and yet I see no grace, just an anguished face of a man committed to a desperate dive. Kal leaps from a rocky precipice above, Superman falls – he falls upon the warrior. She has turned and braces herself against him, her shield raised, and her sword directed at me, I take advantage of this and cast my lasso towards her. Kal strikes her, and is cast back from her shield, blood falls from his mouth, I percieve he lacks not only flight but his other powers.

I have my enemy now and with my all I drag her too me. She lurches, and stands firm, I feel nothing from the gold cord, no magic pours from it to me and no truth flows to me from my opponent. My god made gifts are but shadows of their former glory, I have no magic here, only my will as the armoured warrior wrestles against me, turning bracing my lasso around her back and Shield arm. My opponent has driven Kal to the dirt, and even as he rises defenceless against her, the sharp point of her sword seeks his heart.

I cannot let her take him, I attack my nightmare to save a dream, for my friend cannot be here, he is alive, and I am dead, cut apart by the god of bloodshed Ares, and yet even in this insubstantial world now I cannot bear to see him wounded. Even dead I will kill to see him live.

My mind clears with this thought, the endless repetition of strike and counter strike is banished as fire rages in my belly, the grim warrior in the deaths head mask will not take the life of Kal even in my dreams.

My stolen sword finds the meat of her, she has left her side exposed, I find an opening between her ribs under her arm pit, and with it the metal slides inside to the heart.

She falls, her sword strikes the dirt, and Kal catches her against himself. I fall to my knees on the sand if I were not dead I would be exhausted, dirty and thirsty, but all sensations are illusionary here.

Kal lays my opponent onto the ground, he looks to me. "Diana." He gasps, his hands rubbed red raw, his face bleeding where my opponent had struck him with her shield. My hand drifts to his cheek, unbelievably warm, wet with tears that stream from his eyes, I taste them bringing my fingers to my lips, and they are not the same as before, he weeps not in sorrow, and not from love lost, but of joy, Kal cries for me, for seeing me. Cruel the hands of the fates who have woven this dream to tease me with what might have been, for I am dead, and my best friend can but grieve and any tears he sheds will be for my passing.

"Did you sing me a lament." I ask him.

He takes my hands in his, the warmth from him chases away the mist. "I have crossed the Styx to bring you home." He tells me, his breath is sweet, hot and alive.

I break from him, in fear. Can this be so? Can he have crossed from life into death and still live. I fall backwards, my shock at his living touch too much, my feet tangle in the corpse of my enemy.

I fall onto her, my left hand is painted red in her blood, my right is falls onto her helmet, knocking the deaths head masked helm from her head, and I turn to see a mirror of death looking back at me. My own face, my eyes glassy and life less, and blood runs from between my breathless lips.

I scream not making a sound.

Beneath me the flesh of my twin turns to dust like the clay from which I was made, and yet leaves behind white dry bones.

And I am surrounded by them, the ground around us is littered with bones, and in that dark moment I know they are mine – every last one of them belong to me, to twins of me, doppelgängers who had fallen, I had been killing myself time and time again. I was both victor and vanquished, fighting myself always. For how long I could not know.

I roll to my knees, and I see he is still before me. My impossible visitor. "Diana." He says my name with love and compassion, and his hand cups my face, his other points to the shield on his chest. "It's really me, it's Kal, Clark, Superman. It's me."

I take his hand from cheek and press it to my lips. "Is it really you."

"Alive and kicking."

"How?" I ask him.

Kal takes me in his arms and hugs me, vital and full of life, he tells me of his bargain with Hectate, to enter Hades powerless to find me and bring me back, to discover the price we must pay, he and I to obtain the coin to pay the ferryman to return across the Styx.

I dare not think what that journey might demand of us, but as I hold him to my bosom, I don't care.


	12. Chapter 12

Diana and I leave the field of bones and return to the banks of the River Styx. It was clear that neither of us had the advantages we were accustomed too, Diana's injuries are superficial. I bathe them clean in the water, and afterwards she allows me to drape my cape around her shoulders. The winds here can whip the sharp sand up and at us without warning, I have my full costume, she has bare limbs and here in Hades only human resistance.

Sighting the city upstream comes as a surprise, more for Diana than me. She recognises it straight away, even through the sand storms, and the mists. "Themyscira."

I peer through the darkness to the torch lit walls and see something that only beats a passing resemblance to the palatial buildings of Paradise Island. It is ruder, simpler, more ancient in appearance. "How can it be?"

Diana explains. "It is Themyscira, but the first Themyscira, not the Island Paradise that you know Kal."

I realised this realm of Hades was something peculiar to Diana's soul, and her heritage. Diana was seeing a ghost of her peoples past.

The city of Themyscira, grew larger as we drew nearer. The walled town had been the home of the Amazons beyond Thracia until Hercules had raped and pillaged Queen Hippolyta's person, people and territory.

Old Themyscira waited lonely in the desert, it's heavy black wood gates were open to us as we entered, the yellowed walls, and under the dark sky of the underworld we both saw the long dead city was populated by shades of the dead, and here these long dead Amazon's were as real as either of us. Buildings once white were stained cream and yellow.

Cries ring out. "It is a Man!" Amazon's scream and hiss in anger. Diana casts back my cloak from her shoulders and brings forward her sword to make her point.

Another voice with reverential tone gasps. "It is the Princess Regent!"

The boldest of the Amazon's comes forward. "It cannot be so. I have only just myself left the Princess Regent in the Palace, she was hearty and whole, this one bears bruises and cuts to face and body that speak of war."

"I am Diana, Champion of Themyscira and the gods!"

Diana and I face spear and swords, these are Amazons after all, and I take hold of my friend.

"Perhaps we can learn something here that might help us."

Diana snarls. I fear that she will fight. "Diana." I speak her name with urgency and passion. She turns and looks at me. "We are but two, and this is a city of warriors."

Reluctantly she lowers her sword, turning the hilt to her Amazon sisters, the bold one takes the sword and leads. The others follow herding us after her to the city's heart, to the palace. A tall fortress opens to us.

Within we are ushered at sword point to an audience with the Princess Regent.

I see another Diana, her finely sculptured beauty unmistakable, crowned with flowing dark locks she is everything Wonder Woman and more, yet there is something very different, this Diana's eyes are as cold as artic's bluest sea ice. She is seated on a pedestal throne of white marble, her demeanour has all the authority that only a true monarch seems to command, her costume is true gold and coloured with precious stones, the red is ruby, the blue sapphire, the white the clear fire of diamonds.

Around her the court of the Amazon's stands silently.

"What is this, I look into a mirror when I look at you, a battered bruised mirror, but we are otherwise identical, save you are a wounded pauper and I a perfect princess."

"I am Diana Princess of Themyscira, and Amazon Champion." Diana beside me said with cold fury.

"My aren't you full of fight." The Princess Regent said.

I grabbed at Diana as she leapt at her twin. My hands only succeeded in grabbing my cape.

Instantly or so it seemed to me, Amazon's appeared between the two Diana's, mine fell forced down by the shaft of bronze tipped spears.

"Who are you man to think you can come here?"

"Diana I am Kal-El last son of Krypton, called Superman." I told her. Already I began to grasp what magic was at work here.

The Princess Regent looked down at me from her raised throne, and with it came all the weight of her office, here she carried the responsibility of absolute authority, of divine right. "I know your coat of arms, but here Patriarchs are not recognised."

"Surely it is remembered?" I asked. The Princess Regent hesitated for the briefest moment.

"Kal you should not have come, certainly not bringing with you a demon as this one." She spoke of her own twin, who was held at spear point. "I do not tolerate the peace of my realm being broken."

I bent down and drew the first Diana to me, her body pulsed with animal tension, she was like a predator ready to spring. My arms wrapped around her waist, and I whispered to my lioness. "This Princess Regent is you." I knew it in my heart, I could see it clearly. If there was one thing I understood it was living a fractured life, living as different persons, distinct one from the other. Here in Hades where the real was unreal it made sense to me that there should be a second Diana.

"I am not." The Princess Regent interrupted, angrily she leant into us. "I alone carry the weight of this office and I alone command my people."

The court shook, each one trembled to an Amazon. Some abased themselves falling prostrate onto the dark marble floor, the warriors instead stiffened becoming rigid like statues.

"Diana you are not alone." I told her. "As long as I live you will never be alone."

She looked at me the ice queen, her eyes as lifeless as the sapphires that adorned her skirt. "I am dead." She told me in a whisper.

"I am alive and I am here, dead or not, I am coming Princess Regent, you cannot hide from me, even in the depths of hell, I will find you every time."

"Why?"

"Because I am your best friend. Only I really understand you."

"Clark Kent, farmboy? How can you adopted son of the American Republic understand me?"

"Diana I am more than the child of Kansas, I am a child of two worlds of Krypton, and Earth. We both came to America, we both fell in love with it's people and it's values, values we have fought for together."

"I am a Princess, I am born to rule."

"We have fought in the halls of power, fought with words as often as deeds of courage, in palaces and corporate towers as often as bloodied and in the dirt. I have fought with you as Princess and as Warrior."

"Even now you hold the warrior in check, would you shackle the Princess too?" Diana asked me.

The other Diana, the one I held, spoke softly. "I am not held in check, but rest in the embrace of my comrade. Together we stand, and together we fall."

I held out my hand. "I am a farmboy from Kansas, but I am also Primogeniture of the House of El. I have always fought with you as an equal. If I must stand with you Princess as a Prince then I lay claim to that title because I am Krypton's last son."

The ice in Diana's eyes melted.

"Will you not stand with me Diana?" I asked.

With the court in silence and prostrate before their Regent, the Princess stepped down from her dais and came to me, the jewelled bodice sparkled ruby red, her skirt shone blue sapphire with diamond stars. She extended her hand. "My Prince what boon have you come to ask of your Princess?"

"We require Obols, coin to pay the ferry man Charon to cross the Styx, to get home." I told her taking her hand, my other still wrapped around the warrior Diana.

Which was the moment reality fractured, at least what passed for reality in this realm of the dead. Like glass the long dead city of Themyscira shattered around us, from the court outwards, everything and everyone breaking into ever smaller fragments until only grains of coarse sand remained suspended in the whirling winds or white mist. This vision was accompanied by two sensations. That of falling as in dream, and the warmth of the Warrior beside me, and touch of the Princesses hand.


	13. Chapter 13

With my hand I smooth my simple chiton, a Greek dress made from a rectangle of cloth, secured by a braided belt. Embroidered with my eagle symbol on red, and the lower skirt is blue with white stars, together reflecting my iconic costume. My tiara catches the light of the setting sun, like a vast fire beyond the horizon, settling upon the waters of the sea. Waves wash upon the sandy beach warm beneath my bare feet, around me the air is alive with the laughter of children.

"Mother come play with us." The boy called Peter asks.

I skip from the waves as the water splashes my legs, the tide comes in as the day ends. I laugh and dance from the waves, to join him and his brothers and sisters, so many children run and play around me. I know their names, for I named each one, and they call me mother. Everyone of them an angel, a cherub, and a vision of loveliness, care free and full of life. I chase them like the huntress I am at heart, and like the mother I have become I let them escape my touch, more often than not, finding joy in the magical sound of their laughter.

From Cornucopia's magical horn of plenty, I spread out a bountiful banquet on crisp white linen so every child can eat their fill of fresh fruits, fine pastries, and candies.

I take up the guitar the instrument I had mastered in life, in America my adopted country, and play for them the songs I remember.

As I watch my children eat I see three figures walking towards me.

Two women, one is wearing the clothes of a Princess of Themyscira, the other that of an Amazon Warrior. They are visions of me. I set the guitar down beside me and rise from the sands. The third is Superman, my friend Kal. I should be confused by this, and yet even though I cannot explain it to myself, their arrival seems just, even expected.

"Don't worry. I will go and see what they want." I tell the children, their faces remind me that I am the only adult they have ever seen. In all honesty I do worry, I know that I have forgotten something both important and tragic. I have buried this deep within me, to forget, and that scares me.

"Diana." Kal says with surprise, but he is not overawed. Superman leaves my other selves to take my hand, I freely give him my affection, a coy kiss to his cheek.

"Kal why have you come?" I ask him. My eyes do not meet his, rather I look on the red and yellow of the shield he wears on his chest. I have my answer there.

"You have to ask?"

I touch the crest. "This symbol means hope to Krypton's dead world, and to Earth's living planet Superman." Only now do I risk his eyes. I know when I do I will plunge back in reality, I will face what I am.

"Come back. All we need are the obols to meet Charon's price." He makes it sound so easy.

I laughed at him, and skip back and away. "Where can we go to find coin in Hades?" I ask my eyes fill with tears.

"I had hoped you would know." He confesses, his hand runs through his hair, he is both weary and worried.

The fire of sun fades across the sea, and nightfalls quickly.

"Where are these children from?" The Warrior Diana asks.

"From here." I tell her pointing to the sands. She looks at me with sadness, for we are one. Each of the three of me understands.

As darkness falls my children lay down to sleep where they are, curling up together upon the sand, tired from play, and full of fine and delightful food. The dark comes quickly as it can in the tropics, and with the dark the tide advances.

Superman looks at the waves moves quickly to where the children lie, to where each after the feast from the horn of plenty now lays down to sleep.

"Diana, they should move, how can they sleep here? The tide comes in."

I leap at him, and bury my face in his chest. "You cannot stop the tide." I weep, I am not ashamed of my tears.

He moves from me, I grab his hand, and he turns back to me, his eyes question the vision, as the children's feet are kissed by the waves, and they do not wake, the frothy waters lap around the sleeping infants and as it does the children melt, losing substance, falling away back into the sand. Just as I was made from sand so they had been made, and to the sand they return as the tide engulfs them.

I fall to my knees, my hand still in his.

"Tomorrow Kal I will make some more children like me from the sands."

"And tomorrow the sea with reclaim them?" He said angrily bringing me to him, but the anger was not in his touch, his hand was gentle, his touch spoke of compassion, and his eyes were full of understanding, but his heart beat with righteous anger.

"As I do every sunrise, so the sea every sunset undoes."

"There is magic here." The Princess Regent says. "In this moment, in this twilight."

"Yes." I agree as the water washes away the soft outlines of my children. "There is magic, for we are three together here." I hold my hand out to my other selves. "I must dance a lament." I tell them. "As I have danced and wept every night under the moon. Come let us dance together."

Kal looks on mystified as hands join and a circle is formed.

Together we sway, creating our own rhythm, our long matched hair flutters in the sea breeze, dances with us as we twist left to right.

Together we three dance, and together we sing. "Blue eyes in which would shine the distances of a morning sky, and we sang that they would not be blurred by tears. To them came the sea's embrace and to the sands you all returned until the next tomorrow."

-'*'-

I listen to Diana sing and watch her dance. Three Diana's, three goddesses, one a Warrior, one a Princess, and one a Mother. Collectively I recognise my friend, I see her qualities, her strengths and her power.

As she dances I see the Three Graces together, whom the Greeks called the Charites, the beautiful goddesses of nature – red in tooth and claw, charm - in politcs, diplomacy and love, and of human creativity and fertility.

I had never truly imagined Diana as a mother, and I understand why I never permitted myself to take that intuitive leap, as obvious as it was. Diana was my friend and my comrade, above all else an immortal Amazon Princess. I had not considered her future, not in the same way I worried for Bruce or Lois, with their human frailty and as they grew older the disparity between my life expectancy and theirs became increasingly obvious. I was experiencing first hand the reality of functional immortality, that my friends aged as I stood still, and this experience was one I shared with the Amazons. Yet Diana was the exception among her people, not the rule, Diana was the only child born on their Paradise Island.

Diana dances, three of her, their hands meeting together in the centre as they circle, hands rising and falling as they turn as one, and individually, their feet rhythmic on the sands.

I see in her the essence of Gaia, the Earth herself. In each facet of Diana's love is visible, as a Warrior and a Princess she was as a mother defending her cubs, or a Queen her subjects. Here in this tragic beach she was compassion personified, I saw in her the potential for new life, for children. I remembered how her mother Hippolyta had for centuries longed to have a child, thinking how could I be so blind, Diana was so like her, in her biology driven to bring her own children into the world. Here on these magical sands was the hardest of all Hades's tests of her Spirit, and for me the most revelatory. I cross a threshold to see Diana as a sexual being, as woman as potential mother, as a mate.

The rhythm of her dance speeds up, the chant accelerates, and I feel the magic of the twilight. It cries out to my primitive nature, lust burns within me, years of pent up internalised and buried desire, passion I could not, would not acknowledge even to myself, ignites in my soul, a hot searing fire like the sun, illuminating the deep love of friendship, testing it, and proving it be precious gold. I see Diana as a woman, yes she is my best friend, and yes I love her and desire her. She is all of these things, she is the Three Graces of Myth personified, I see her completely, and I fall to my knee.

Diana turns and steps back – the three of them stand a triumvirate back to back, their hands held high, and touching, they spin as only Wonder Woman can, becoming a blur of colour, accompanied by the crackle of magic.

"Diana forgive me." I whisper.

Her song ceases, and from the kaleidoscope of three a single Diana stands before one and whole, as Wonder Woman she drops to her knees before me, and takes my face in her hands. "What have I to forgive?" She asks. "You have crossed from life into death to win me back, to unite my fractured soul. I should ask you to forgive me, for leaving you, for dying."

I rest my hands on her shoulders. "I have loved you as my friend for as long as I have known you Diana, but I was blind to who you really were, and what you really meant to me."

"Kal." She whispers.

"Diana. I love you. I could never look at you as woman, as a friend as a comrade, yes, but as a woman I had to stop myself, I was a married man there was a line I could not cross, but I know I was lying to myself all along."

She looks into my eyes. "Now in death itself, you cross that barrier to tell me you love me. Oh Kal if gaining your love means dying I'll die a thousand times, a thousand and one nights for your touch."

I press my lips to hers. I feel the warmth of her kiss as we open to each other. My hands fall from her shoulders and I draw her close to me, her hands wrap around my neck as mine enclose around her waist, we come together in our first true embrace on the sands of a different reality, not knowing whether we are alive or dead, but for me nothing else matters but this moment.

Our embrace under the jewelled sky of the realm of the dead is defiant, it speaks of fertility, it is the kind of kiss that leads to new life, that demands more from each of us.

-'*'-

I can hardly believe it, I have Superman in my arms, his lips touch mine, and I am happy, the horrors of Hades have been banished, I am whole again, not only because I am united from trials my soul no longer divided, but because I have found true love. The ancients believed we were created as androgynous souls, which became divided into the two genders male and female, that we are fated to search until we find our other half, our soul mate.

I have dated other men, even perhaps entertained thoughts of love, but I know in the depths of my heart I was created to be one with this man, I am yin to his yang. That I was made to be the answer to the question Superman poses, and in turn I am complete him.

We huddle together under the stars, we come together as one, and yes it is a cold night in hell, but we don't care, we are together, we have each other we are one flesh.


	14. Chapter 14

Together on a beach beneath the stars. Diana and I lay entwined, holding each other in an intimate embrace. I have never been happier even though we are both lost in the depths of a chaotic hades.

Then I feel the oddest sensation as grains of sand sift beneath us. Sand runs away like water as the night sky seems to rise to meet us, but it is an illusion. Diana and I rest upon vast palm of Hectate's giant hand, the beach tumbles away through her fingers, as she brings her hand to her face to stare upon us both.

Hectate's eyes burn, orbs of deep orange fire, her pupils a black coal fractured by red heat.

"Well done Kal-El of Krypton, only true love could cast a spell so powerful as to unite Diana's soul thrice cleaved by Ares's hand."

Diana and I held one another as we found our feet on the patch of sand caught in the crevice of the goddesses hand. I grasped her meaning. Ares had created a weapon, three blades had erupted like flick knives from Bruce's wrist, he had driven these three through Diana with the magic of godly power, not only killing her but dividing her soul.

"What is the game you play?" Diana demanded.

Hectate allowed herself a smile. "Why Princess all I sought to see was you united – and united again, joined as one with a man worthy of you, one of powers both similar and yet different, magic and science complimenting one another, a meeting of two worlds."

Diana took my hand we stood defiant, staring together into the dark eyes of a giant. "You are many things goddess." Diana said. "Love is not however the source of your power."

"Even when there is no greater magic?" Hectate teased.

"I doubt you truly believe that."

I said. "I did not expect you to act out of selflessness. You told me Diana was important - needed. If that is true send us home."

Hectate did not answer us but extended her arm, sending us through the dark mists of Hades, and from these clouds her hand plunged into blue sky, over a green and fertile land below us. The goddesses hand enters the earth like a ghost. We do not, rather our solid feet settle on the grass.

I take stock of the garden paradise around us, standing stones create an ancient altar, and beyond is a tall tree grew, upon it boughs golden fruit like apples glimmered. Around it's trunk was wrapped a dragon of myth, long and serpent like.

"The Ladon." Diana stated. "The guardian of the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides, Hera! This is Hera's orchard – the Westward Land, the setting Sun's realm."

"Welcome my children to your new home." Hectate tells us, she appears changed having shifted from the giant of a moment ago to a cloaked crone, the old witch woman of folk lore. She extended her hand, in it a golden apple. "Eat of this and neither of you will ever know death, you can be together always, never having to fight for your lives, never to die at the hands of gods or monsters, or the wicked schemes and machinations of men."

I stared at the mythical fruit of promised immortality and I was astounded by it's beauty.

"Kal." Diana took my hands. "Do not be betwitched!" She shook me. "It is a siren fruit, it is not what it seems, she means to entrap us."

"Come Amazon, don't you desire rest in paradise forever with the man you love?" Hectate asked.

"Why would I?" Diana fired angrily back at the crone.

"To experience heaven like this – forever!" Hectate proclaimed. "Here your children will be born, here they will grow strong. They will be safe from all dangers, safe even from the gods themselves."

Diana was surprised, as was I. The realisation that we could step from friendship's love to become lovers was something we had only just discovered, just began to explore. Both of us were keenly aware what death was – both of us understood we could not promise to escape it. There was something enchanting about living in a perfect paradise.

Hectate placed the golden fruit upon a crude stone alter, one of many boulders arranged in a megalithic circle. With her right hand she produced a knife, that struck the apple into two halves, the juice ran like golden quick silver onto the stone, where it burned as fire. "Here is the guarantee of your future, share this fruit before night falls and embrace everlasting life here in paradise, or return to Hades both of you and receive everlasting death."

With that Hectate blew away like black vapours, leaving behind nothing but sapphire blue sky, and emerald green grass.

I had never felt hunger like the one that burned in my gut as I stared at the impossibly delicacy, the golden fruit called to me.

Diana's hand gripped mine like a vice. "Do not succumb, she means to trap us here in this place."

"Why." I gasp. The desire that grips me is like an agony. Yes I realise it is pain, grinding at my will and demanding me to fall, but I am Superman.

"I'm not going anywhere." I tell Diana. "I have endured the agony of Kryptonite, I can withstand this pain too." I take her in my arms and put my lips to hers, I banish Hectate's gift from my thoughts. I lose myself in her touch.

Night is coming, even as I hold my love to me, even as we measure time by our hearts beating together as one, I feel the coming darkness.

"We cannot submit to Hectate, she has her own agenda." Diana tells me.

"I suspected it, perhaps I should not have made such a bargain."

"No, not for me."

"For you, for this, I would do anything." I told her.

"Kal..." I pressed my finger to her lips. "We are not beaten yet my Princess."

The Dragon Lagon stirs from it's sleep and sniffs the air. I hear the sweet sound of angelic voices.

Diana brushes my cheek. "It's the sound of the Nymphs of the Evening. They too watch over the golden apples and Hera's Orchard."

The Nymphs approach, they are but young girls, who in distant times would have been considered ready to marry, but in today would still be in school. The sound of their song fills the air with a sweetness that compares to the scent of the apple split in two by Hectate. It is a heady cocktail.

Seven maidens approach the rude circle of stone in which we stand, and as they skip towards us they laugh and cry out greetings.

"You have not eaten the fruit?" Their leader asks, the one who is first among them, her chiton is a translucent red and flowing, the others wear similar pastel shades of the seven fold spectrum.

"No." I whisper. It is the best I can manage through my teeth.

Diana grips my waist. "Erytheia we do not want your apples."

Violet asks. "Why then steal our fruit?" I figure the first question was a trap of sorts.

"We did not Arethusa." Diana replies. "We were given it."

"Who could pluck the fruit of the tree and give it to you?" Erytheia in the red asked.

"Hectate." I spat.

The Nymphs floated over the grass around one another singing it seemed whilst almost fading from reality, and all the while darkness fell.

Green spoke. "Then you do not desire the fruit?"  
"With all my being. But I will not take it." I told her. Diana agreed. "Neither Hygeia will I."

"Lagon awakes!" The Nymph in yellow declared.

"You are right Lipara." Erytheia in the red agreed. "It smells the fallen apple."

I turn and see the serpentine dragon slide itself from the tree, uncoiling and extending it's long body towards us, it's tongue flickering in the air tasting it. I wondered what would become of us.

Twilight marks the day's end, and as the sun finally settles behind horizon, a red dwindling fire. Hectate solidifies from the shadows, black whips of smoke entwine to reveal her chosen form, startlingly beautiful, her skin is the same golden colour as the fruit's flesh, and she is draped in gold, in every way emphasizing the delights of her gift, the apple before us.

"Quick children, take your prize!"

The Nymphs fall back around us, encircling the alter and Hectate, dancing around us like wary birds, in fear and awe of the ancient goddess of magic.

"No." We manage to say together, holding each other, finding comfort and courage in shared love.

"As soon as night falls so will you, you will fall back into the depths of Hades!"

"Better free in Hell than a slave in Heaven." I tell her.

Hectate shrieks. "Don't you wish your children to live in paradise?"

"A gilded apple from your hand is but a gilded cage by another name." Diana rebukes. "Our children will know freedom, truth and justice."

"That's the American way." I add, I look into Diana's eyes.

The Ladon crawls closer, I feel it's hot breath upon us. Darkness surrounds us as flame belches from the dragon's maw.

"Then be consumed by the Hell Mouth of the Lagon!" Hectate screams.

All we can do is stand and fight. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

We dive into the flames together.

Hot and angry the dragons breath engulfs us, and I see red. Red flames all around me, burning hot like Rao. I am burning but my body is not consumed. Like the bush before Moses, I am being swallowed not by the Lagon, but the red light of Rao the Red God of Eternal Fire. In the midst of the flames I see a familiar figure, dressed in the ceremonial white on white brilliance of Kryptonian formal wear, the emblem of our House is worn on the chest. The crest of El. My father draws close to me.

"My son."

"Father – Jor-El." Then I see my mother comes with him. "Mother – Lara."

"What are you doing my darling Kal-El?" She asks me.

"Dying I think." I reply, my voice but an echo in my mind.

Jor-El extends his hand. "You are Kryptonian Kal-El as much as you love and embrace this world and it's traditions you arose from a different clay, evolved from the primordial mud of a distant planet.

"You are flesh and blood Kryptonian, born of fire and ice, where the two met in the crystal clear science of your people."

I stare through the red fire, and remember, all my life I have lived under the yellow light of Sol. All my life I have basked in the suns rays and I have been empowered by them. To whom have I listened? The goddess Hectate? Why have I believed her?

"Kal-El you love the Earth, but she is not your mother, nor your mistress, rather she is your wife, your lover, the source of your courage and your strength, you are her champion."

"Father I don't understand."

"Embrace her do not worship her from afar, together you are greater than you could ever be on my world."

The fire seems to thin around me, and my left hand has not released Diana's right, conscious of one another we press our bodies and lips together, so we fall as one.

The fire's light fades and there is only darkness.

Hectate's voice echoes around us. "I brought you here, I brought you together, you owe me my price."

Together in the darkness our hearts beat as one. "What price is that?" Diana asks.

Hectate does not answer for a long time, then finally with bitter rage in her voice she spells out her demands.

"My price is your children."

"What?" I spit the word in shock and rage. Diana trembles her own anger igniting within her, a hand touches my face, Diana's fingers touch my lips in the darkness.

"Your children will be offspring of two worlds, of Earth and Krypton, of Magic and Science, they will be a new generation of Titans, greater than the giants Zeus vanquished, greater than any of the gods."

In that moment I saw Hectate's scheme, to raise our children as warriors to unseat the gods of Olympus. Diana's hand withdraws from my face, and at first I see only the blackness, the shades of Hectate's magic, the all engulfing shadow of this the nothingness. Then I see something else, something unexpected, a glimmer of light, light from my eyes reflecting in the aegis metal of Diana's bracelet, her wrist slowly falling from before my face. I see my righteous rage, manifesting itself as red fire. Magic be damned, together Diana and I can do anything.


	15. Chapter 15

I can see! The red light comes from Kal, his eyes flash, I don't know how, but I sense why, together I know and understand his rage, heat and light erupt from his eyes and I catch the energy beam on the edge of my bracelet, angling it away from me and outwards into the darkness, stretching the beam of light into a sweeping cone of light, it's more a work of magic than physics. I add to the mix my own signature turn, spinning around I add more sparkle, more magic. Kal's heat vision lights up the darkness, and I catch sight of Hectate's ghostly form in the void.

The red laser light strikes her, but it is not pure energy but a deadly cocktail of sunlight channelled through Kryptonian organelles in Kal's retina, and spun out by the old magic of Earth, of Gaia, that spin gives it power in this realm, and that magical quality means we can strike out at the goddess. Her ghostly form ignites like paper, flashing red and hot, and in that light the darkness washes away and we fall to gravel sands beside the river Styx. Our descent accompanied by Hectate's screams of pain filled rage.

But being a goddess the indignity will not last, she is an eternal.

"Are you all right." Kal asks, cradling my face in his hand, I take it from my cheek and press it to my heart.

"I'm fine." I look at him seriously. "How did you do that."

"I'm not sure, I guess I took some advice along the way, that this realm is shaped by what we expect, and I realised that I believed in you, I believed in the power for good you embody, call it my faith in you, but once I'd taken that step, I realised I believed in magic, but I didn't need to believe Hectate, she told me I was powerless, but my power comes from the sun, from my flesh and bones, it isn't hers to give or take. Then after what she said about our children, I just got really mad."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Our children?"

"Okay I might be getting ahead of myself."

"No Kal, I understand." I said before kissing him.

"But." I begin afterwards, we are still trapped in Hades." I gestured out across the wide and turbulent water of the river."

Kal peered across the river. "I can't see an horizon, it's as if the river is an endless sea."

I understood him – Superman would cross an ocean in a heartbeat if he had too, but this was no ordinary expanse of water.

"It is a barrier between realms, rather than a literal river." I explain. "We need to catch the ferry across – if you follow my meaning."

"I get it Diana, nothing is exactly what it seems here. Charon's boat appears mundane, but it's really something magical."

I nodded.

He frowned. "What are we going to do?"

"We need coin, or something of value for Charon." I knew I was telling him what he already understood.

"Yes – but..." Kal seemed to pause for a moment. "Something of value?"

"Sure the sight of the golden branch of Sybil led Charon to help Aeneas to cross."

"How about this then?" He held up his wrist and pulled back the blue of his sleeve, showing me the bracelet I had given him. "We have metal. It may not be silver.."

I interrupted. "Adamant is worth more than gold."

"So you're saying it might just work."

I shrugged. "I don't have any better ideas – what have we to lose."

Kal takes off my gift. "I've got kind of attached to this." He smiled.

"I'll make it up to you, I promise."

I found a flat stone and placed the bangle down. "Okay Kal I need some heat, can you please oblige me?"

Sure enough the adamant bracelet soon glowed red hot, I brought my wrist guards down like a hammer, the vambraces flattened the metal. Kal picked it up and shaped two discs by keeping the metal red hot working it like clay in his hands.

He showed me the result with a wink.

Arm in Arm we flew along the banks of Styx. To find we had powers again even here was a revelation, but it was as Kal observed this place was an extension of our fears and failings, by recognising them, and moving past them, we could build on our strengths.

The flight made quick time of the journey back to where a lone pier stretched out into the river, we alighted upon the ancient planks and walked to its end. There we stood and waited.

The act of setting foot upon the dock was a calling out to the ferryman, and in due course the skiff of Charon bobbed its way to us.

The bearded ragged sailor leapt onto the timber dock and looked sourly at me, and then to Kal he said. "So you have found her?"

"I have."

"Have you fitting payment for a journey across the river?" Charon asked his voice rasped like an old saw. Each of us display our discs of adamant, and I tell him. "Only the finest metal, having more value than gold to the gods."

Charon looks at the coin and tastes the metal between his dark teeth. First one and then the other.

"Aye this is the finest metal I have seen in long while."

"Then you will take us back to the other side?" Kal asks the demon boatman.

"Aye." Charon gestures us to the boat, and we follow him aboard.

I watch him use the long pole in his hand to drive the skiff across the waters, his eyes burn red, and his face grows dark as we cross over, my heart feels heavy and I sense something is amiss.

Kal touches my arm in the distance I can see the other side of the river, here at the mid point we are very much between worlds. "Don't tempt the fates Kal I tell him, don't look back."

He nods with serious face broken by a boyish smile. "I remember the story of Orpheus and Eurydice."

Charon's red eyes glowed violently. "You would do well to remember not to offend your gods."

It was a warning, albeit a brief one, because even as the ferryman spoke the boat floundered and broke apart into the churning water, I tried to fly but the waters grabbed me with the ferocity of a whirlpool, a cold hand of white spray seized Kal bodily. In that moment from the tumultuous waters the full wrath of Hectate was revealed. She abandoned her pretence and Charon vanished, in his place appeared the giant three headed goddess of the cross roads, her faces looking in all directions, her clothes still smouldering from the fire we had unleashed, and where she stood in the water, the heat of her body made the river boil.

Kal reached for me as he drove into the air with the magical waves of the Syx rising up to grab at him. I took his right hand with my left, and using my free fingers loosed my lasso. I put all that I had, everything that was in me to this one throw. The golden chain of Gaia floated across the waters and fastened around the pier on the opposite bank.

"To me Kal." I cried, and he did not hesitate to take hold of my waist I pulled on the cord and hand over hand began dragging us through the water to the opposite bank. Hectate reached for us, but Kal did something I would not believed. He took from head the tiara that was forged from Apollo's Discus and brought it sharp edge down upon the goddesses outstretched fingers, the god made weapon was tiny against Hectate's mighty fingers, but Superman's speed and strength made the difference, and he drew blood, cutting three times three digits. Hectate recoiled, had Kal done this

deliberately, it was almost a magical spell.

The goddess dripped blood into the Styx, she stared at her wound as if mystified by it. It was a brief respite, but long enough for us pass over to the other side, freed of the magical vortex of the space between worlds we landed on the river bank.

I snapped my lasso to me, as I spoke to Kal. "She meant to trap us in limbo between death and life for an eternity."

"I figured it must be something like that." He said handing my tiara back to me.

"Thank you. I never expected that of you."

"I wasn't sure it was possible, but I just believed in us, and went for it. I hoped our bond would be enough."

Time was pressing and as we took to the air, the Styx exploded in a tidal wave as the goddess Hectate strode out after us, still in her giant form. The cave beyond led to Dooms Doorway and beyond that Themyscira. We hurtled into the dark cavern, knowing our pursuer would have to change form, the gigantic avatar of Olympus was not suited to the cavernous route back to the surface.

There remains only the small problem of Cerebus the three headed chimera, part wolf part dragon, and with a mane of writing serpents around each neck. Cerebus was the watchdog of the underworld, now without a master the beast prowled the caverns behind dooms door, forever vigilant, an eternal hunter with one purpose to prevent the dead returning to the land of living, that said I'm good with animals.


	16. Chapter 16

Diana and I made use of our rediscovered powers to speed through the caverns that separated the nexus between the alternative pocket universe of Hades and our own world. Here Diana was my guide. The gods had trapped monsters in these caverns, behind Dooms Doorway. Like some jail come preternatural zoo of the lethal and dangerous of myth.

Ever the huntress Diana scouted out a safe path, we weaved, flying under and over impossible stone stairs that hung in the shadows. The darkness was sometimes broken by sulphurous fires that burned in red hot pits, where the earth's blood boiled up from the deep. We avoided the chasms that led away to danger, Diana said. "I was once sent here by the gods as a challenge, and it is not a test I desire to repeat.

"I don't need Athena as patron to see the wisdom in that." I told her as we flew, even so I scanned the rocky walls for signs malevolence, I too had fought the hydra before today, and shared her reticence, all I wanted now was the warmth of the sun on my skin, to bring her safely back to

the land of the living. We came upon the chimeric beast Cerebus in short time.

The guard dog of hell was a classical nightmare, a construct of savageness, a bestiary of the dangerous in one body. There was an undeniably canine pattern to the monster, but perhaps that was as much my minds need to categorise Cerebus by using a frame of reference I was comfortable with. Cerebus's body was broad, necessarily so, for three heads jutted from it's shoulders. Cerebus barked fire from long toothed snouts, mouths that each pointed from a mane of writhing snakes, the serpents were as hairs upon the giant heads. The width of the chest gave Cerebus a wide stance that smacked of the bull dog, but his tail was long whip like reptilian, and in this context rat like.

Nine beady eyes watched us approach, did I say guard dog? I perhaps should have said gate, because Cerebus barred the path to Themyscira as effectively as any door, his bulk filled the wider caverns exit, blocking our way up to Dooms Doorway itself.

"Shall I drive us an alternative course?" I asked Diana, pointing upwards. I meant to smash a new route to the surface.

"I fear Kal that this cave system is but a transposition point, we are neither in the world of Hades neither are we in the the real world – but caught between them both."

"Then Dooms doorway is the only break point between this limbo and our Earth?"

Diana nodded. Cerebus growled and sulphuric smoke curled from his three pairs of nostrils. I wondered what kind of volcano existed in it's belly. Oddly each nose had an different ridge and line pattern, of course dogs noses are as individual as fingerprints, I notice these kind of details, I am an animal and a dog person after all.

That said I don't have the harmony with the natural world that Diana supernaturally possesses. I learned at the knee of my pa on the Kent Farm. Her god-mother Artemis, goddess of the hunt bestowed this power upon her at birth, and most fundamentally I now see my lover...

Oh my word! My own thoughts make my heat skip a beat. It is enough to make Diana turn and look at me with concern as she sinks towards the savagery that was Cerebus.

I wave her on with a smile and watch as beauty calms the savage beast, with awe and wonder.

This is my lover, Diana - thinking of Wonder Woman in this way, moving irrevocably from friendship to something else more profound, is a change so fundamental to my world that it makes me catch my breath. This change is remarkable not because I find the thought of Diana as my lover as odd or strange, but rather I gasp because the opposite is true. The thought of her and I together as one flesh is self evidently right – it's both natural and beautiful. Like the rainbow, a unity of life giving sunlight, life giving rain, suspended in the air we breathe, magical, mystical, and naturally right.

Diana sinks to Cerebus, and from her throat comes a sound so beautiful I gasp again, Diana sings a song of life and love, of liberty and truth, a poem about our journey through death itself to find each other, and as she recounts our adventure in song, Cerebus is mesmerised by her, the music of her perfect voice soothes the savage beast, and three minds are lulled into peacefulness.

I see my lover as an avatar of Gaia herself, of the earth, of my beloved world, my adopted home, no one embodies the contradictions of the complexities of this planet more than her.

As a child I loved Smallville High's Queen – Lana, and in Metropolis there was Lois who embodied that city's character, in every way she was Queen of that 'Planet', and for the young Clark Kent, very much a boy in a man's body, this world eclipsed Kansas, but that Clark Kent is dead. I am a new man, reborn and remade. For this Superman there is Diana, she is a true Princess, and a global force of nature and of love, she personifies the world I serve, and love.

Diana strokes Cerebus's chins, and he rests, falling to his stomach, panting like the dog he reminds me of, allowing us to pass. Wonder Woman leads me forward and we race through the last of caverns maze, emerging at circular metal seal - the door of the Amazon's vault, we are inside and outside is Paradise.

Diana strides confidently to the metal bringing the metal of her Aegis forged vambraces against the adamant hard silvery door. The rhythm is clear and strong, primal and recognisable as a language of it's own. Diana speaks in code to the guards who always stand by protecting the route to Hades. I don't doubt for a moment they will answer. I can see them move, attending the great piston that holds the door shut.

Suddenly the cavern echoes with a howl so terrible that it sets my teeth on edge, and threatens to vibrations so strong that they will shatter the rock around us.

"What was that?" I gasp. I process the sound, and add. "It sounded like a howl of pain."

Diana nodded. "I fear it was."

"Cerebus." I said my voice hoarse with anger and disgust. What could have caused the demon dog of Hades to cry out in agony? It was a rhetorical question, because I knew the answer. Diana's eyes told me she knew too.

"Did you think I would let you go?" Hectate shouts as she materialises behind us, forming from black snakes of smoke rising from the darkness of the cave.

"Actually yes I did." I countered defiantly. In Hectate's hands she held a vast canine tooth, so large it obscured her human form, an amalgam of the beautiful and the crone, with the formers face and the latter's black smoke robes. The tooth's root was bloody, and that spoke volumes to me.

"You have torn a tooth from Cerebus." It was a logical conclusion.

Hectate laughed.

Behind me the Amazons had unlocked the vault door, and the great metal seal opened, drawn pack by a mammoth piston that held the vault closed. Neither I or Diana hesitated, we dived through the opening as soon as we could, and as soon as we were through and on the other side we put our shoulders to the metal. Diana and I pushed. Wonder Woman called out to her sisters. "Close the door – seal the vault!" The piston hissed once more.

But even as Dooms Doorway slipped shut with hiss and clang, I saw the wisps of black smoke escaping through the crack even as Diana and I forced it closed with all the speed we could muster.

We rose out of the cavern that holds the vault pursuing the charcoal mist that embodies the goddess of magic Hectate out to the beach beyond where as a dark cloud Hectate hovers over the golden sands of Themyscira.

The goddess of magic solidifies before us her cloak of shadows fluttering like wings. Hectate casts Cerebus's tooth into the beach, and like an oversized dagger it digs deep. Hectate waves her hands and she summons the wind from the sea, and in heartbeat the tooth is buried by her magic, the sand driven to mound over the tooth by the wind at her behest.

Diana's hand grasps mine and she looks to me. "The magic of a dragon's tooth!"

I nod, I know the classics well enough, the Phoenician prince Cadmus sowed dragon's teeth, once planted, they grew into fully armed warriors.

The clarion call of Amazon trumpet warns the island of danger, and the sound of Amazon's assembling reaches us, but the nature of Hectate's spell becomes clear as she summons from the dragon's tooth the slain back to life. The sands pour away and the mound collapses around the figure that emerges from beach.

Ares his armour now gleaming like fine enamel arises from the golden dust of Themyscira, covered with jagged razor teeth, the god of war stands reformed, a terrifying vision in white.

"Hera." Diana says. "If ever a dragon's tooth was special to reanimate a slain god, it is a tooth from the head of the demon dog of Hades."

I could only agree with her, and yet the author of our calamity, my near death, and hers, stood before us, allied it seemed with Hectate. One thing was certain, we had a fight on our hands.


	17. Chapter 17

Kal hung beside, me his red cape fluttered in the wind behind him, the alien fabric alive in the sea breeze, his hands were bunched into fists, and his face set with grim determination. "Let me take Ares."

I hesitated, Aphrodite forgive me, my first thought was to wonder if his call was sexist. I have laboured too long in the Patriarch's World. For in truth there was little strategy we could apply to this moment, both beings were gods in their own right, both were beings of power, the old magic was theirs to command, but of the two Hectate was by her very nature the more dangerous to Kal, she was magic incarnate, we should play to our strengths, although when facing gods, even this can be but a futile gesture, but it was all we could do.

If ever I needed my god-mother's strengths it was now. I shouted out my prayer as a battle cry. "Olympus hear me! Your champion defends you." I could have added yet again – would they hear me? Was there enough power with the gods to aid me? Here on Themyscira Olympus was not forgotten. Already my sisters answered the age all clarion call to arms, and I felt the weight of responsibility sit heavy upon my heart. I cursed myself. How many times had violence come to Paradise, how many times had this been because of me. "Hera help me!" I whispered, my hand squeezed Kal's, I hoped not for the last time, and I acted, just as I knew he would.

I drove at Hectate, her form rippled before me like smoke. A moon goddess her strength lay in dark of the divine feminine, in the rhythm of thirteen, the mystery of blood. I was born under the hunters moon, but Hectate was an older force still, one so basic it was tidal, washing on the shores of sand and rock, before humanity had any words to speak of natures majesty. Hectate's primacy was from the awe of nature red in tooth and claw, from the power of the animal magnus; and as I drove to the shadow cloaked goddess of magic she loosed the power of transformation that her soul had first channelled into the Witch Circe. For Hectate embodied the most primal magic, and within the swirling darkness of her smoky cape was the throb of shaman's drums the beat of feet on sacred blood splattered earth, the summoning of the spirits, the talisman of the predator's skin stretched over the dancer's body – in essence a spell of transformation, of theft, to steal from the strong of claw and tooth, that feral power, to bring this strength to the tribe's hunters - to claim it as their a totem.

Hectate twisted as I fell upon her a whirlpool of smoke and vapours, she changed into the beast of beasts, the amalgam of the ferocious, a chimera of chimeras. Her head was of the wolf, with the sabre teeth of the greatest of cats, Whiskered like feline, yet with the round heaviness of the bear. Her neck shone gold with the mane of a lion, and her body rippled with muscle like a great ape and carried the hump of the bison, the horns of a great bull adorned her head. Her hands bore viscous talons, perched like knives on the ends of her human fingers, her clawed feet were long so that she stood on the toes like a cat or a dog, her tail was like the body of a great python, and on her back opened eagle wings. So it was above the meeting of sea and shore, where the waves rolled onto the sands that I engaged with the transformed goddesses in a violent and lethal ballet, there was nothing to constrain our blows, as we moved freely in three dimensions, becoming blurred together in a vortex filled with a banshee wail, and the sound of thunder. Her preternatural blows struck the aegis shield vambraces upon my wrists, with boot and fist I fought her tooth and claw. With all my speed and strength, Hectate brought witchcraft to the fight, and yet her bright magic's that sparked from her hide like static electricity magnified into lightening danced over me biting my skin as wasps stings, sharp but bearable, I was thankful of this strength from where ever it came. Still she stung me and with the shock of that unwelcome pain, she gained a micro second advantage, and with that her claws found me, breaking my skin, letting blood run from my upper arms, she pulled her to me. I felt the fire of her breath like a dragon, hot towards me, heard the hiss of her mouth and saw the edge of her teeth seeking my throat. Yet I could still cross my bracelets, magnifying the protective magic of Zeus's aegis shield, and the fire whipped back to Hectate, with it the air filled with more vapours, these were hers, but this time it was the foul smell of her burning hair. Hectate shrieked, her long crowning main was afire, arching her tooth filled maw back on her long neck screaming in rage and pain. I took this opportunity. Breaking free was agony, but I did it. I drove her back, and pushed myself from out of her taloned grasp with a double round house kick aimed at her still womanly chest. This gave me space I needed, the freedom to loose my golden lasso. I drove a lashing rebuke, Gaia's gold chain snapped out to whip around flaying legs of the goddess, snatching her to me I rode the circular path of my fall resting my strength into the hand of gravity I swung against this, bringing Hectate around in a spin, feeling from her rage and animal lust, a desire to rise above the heights of Olympus, and reach into Hades Realm there to rule absolutely. I released her across the sea letting her plunge into the water. The sea exploded in a tower of water, that sent a great wave crashing onto the beach where my beloved fought the god of war.

Diana's hand tightened around mine and released me in an instant I left her driving down upon Ares. I took a direct and deliberate approach crashing into the enamel armoured god of war, fists extended, the sand of the beach exploded, a different kind of wave broke upon the shore, that which inevitably follows the passage of a being at supersonic speeds smashing into an almost immovable object. I connected with the newly reincarnated Ares. The sound of our collision followed.

His feet found purchase, hanging I suppose upon the gravity of the earth itself, but not before a crater opened in the sand around us so much so I could not see how Diana's fight progressed above me. Wonder Woman smashed into the airbourne were-chimera of the moon goddess of witchcraft, and I concentrated on the god of war.

I gritted my teeth as I moved against this canine dragon reborn, and let the rip with blows unrestrained. I reserved my full strength for the likes of Darksied and Doomsday alone, and it was the latter that came to mind in the seconds that followed.

I rained down machine gun punches into the white hide of Ares, and although he moved with preternatural speed, he was not Hermes, and he was not Diana. Ares was a god, but not of the speed force. Ares had his armour patterned with carnivores daggers, weapons at hand for him, but I had another advantage- that of strength, for Ares was not Hercules or Atlas either. I was glad for every benefit, for not only was Ares's armour covered in growths that resembled the sharp teeth of the predator, but he also had the skill of combat, as a god of war should. My aimed blows too many times fell short, contacting but glancing aside and as I stuck Ares some of these extra teeth broke free. Those that fell were replaced, the enamel armour hydra-like growing two new teeth for each one broken.

I felt my knuckles bleed as my super resilient skin met the hard exoskeleton of this magically empowered being, he was good, but I had skill too, and Ares could not avoid every blow I aimed. Yes I was taking damage, but he too suffered - for much like the tooth from which this form had being birth the enamel exterior of his armour was wrapped around a bloody fleshy interior, the rhythm of my assault cracked this and the blood of Ares mixed with mine, a red stain on his previously pristine white stony exterior. All the while we fought shards of broken enamel fell from his body like rain, these extra teeth salting the crater in which we fought. Sand tumbled around us, followed by sea water as a great wave crashed into the pit, but being buried by Themyscira was not enough to stall our fight, and we rose out of the dirt, a red-blue-white blur of action, churning upwards as if out of boiling mud.

Ares did not hold anything back, his own blows fell through my defence, as he fought like a demon, pretence to style and form fell away as like a man possessed by the berserker rage he fell upon me, and I on him. In truth this battle between us was the very spirit he first embodied, the bloody fight to the death, and just as Doomsdays clawed hands broke my sun kissed skin, so his teeth edged gauntlets bit deep. He boxed me back, but I was not just a brute pugilist, I brought my leg powerfully into play kicking him sideways with all my might sending the god skipping across the sea like a stone.

I saw Kal strike Ares out of the tumult of their battle a moment after Hectate had sunk into the sea, the god of war skimmed the waves like a white stone, bouncing across the water into the distance, even as he shot away from Themyscira I saw the Amazons were assembling on the beach, I was glad it was my blood that had been shed here for Paradise and not my sisters, I had done my part, done my duty to both my people and my gods.

Kal rose to greet me, his face a mess of blood and broken skin, already the kiss of the sun healed him faster than even the purple ray of healing. I realised he had shed blood on the sands of my island too.

The beach was covered with froth of the sea, and the ripples following the violent passage of two gods into the bay lapped the shores of Themyscira. The sands shifted, and in this brief moment of victory Hectates counter strike began to take form. Every tooth that Kal had broken from the reconstituted enamel Ares now took individual form, growing and rising from the wet sand, becoming a warrior of old, battle ready, prepared to continue the fight began by the witchcraft of the goddess Hectate. Each soldier was a fragment of Ares battle lust and rage, within each burned a slither of his soul.

I felt tears well in my eyes for yet again disaster and war had come to Paradise, and I was sure the gods would again take from my people a blood offering, the sacrifice of war, because this dragon's teeth army rose to meet the Amazon's here on Themyscira. An Army that was driven by the muse of Circe, and the hate of Ares, to destroy peace and with it the sorority of the Amazons.

Kal's hand brushed at my tears. Words were not needed, circumstances demanded action, repeated action, and again action – fight and fight on, with each breath came the certainty that steel would meet steel, and in turn flesh to bring death.

Just when I had lost hope of seeing the day end joyfully, just as I was tasting the bitterness of the death laments to come, Kal drew my eyes across the sea.

There rising from the water was a vision of gigantic proportions, a water spout that towered even hight than Metropolis's sky scrapers, and a tower of water that took form, a human visage of a god, Posideon, and this giant was not alone, beside him from the air came the crash of thunderbolts and flash of lightening as cloud grey, black, purple pulled together against the blue, stitched together by the zig-zag needles of light that sparked within it into the vision of Zeus, and from the cave of Dooms Doorway weaved a funnel of smoke like a tornado of equal immense size, that grew from the mouth of the great cavern – a relatively tiny thread that span out into a vast horn of spinning smoke. This became Hades.

I gasped. "Lord Hades lives?"

The trinity of gods stood together in the bay of Themyscira, filling the sky with their immense forms. Zeus who slew their father Cronus, releasing his brothers and with them creating a compact over the corpse of their dead progenitor, a treaty that had divided between them the heavens and the seas, and the underworld, founding the golden age of Olympus. Never had I see a vision like this. These were not the gods with whom I had previously spoken, they stood taller, wider, and joined together in a primal state that made the others seem but pale reflections.

Zeus held in his vast hand the form of Ares snatched from the sea as it bounced through the air. Poseidon spat blue green spittle from out of his mouth, bringing up from the belly of the depths the bedraggled form of the moon goddesses were-chimera and Hectate landed upon the outstretched hand of her master Hades.

Zeus spoke his voice rode like thunder on the wind, he answered my question, vibrating the very atoms of my being. "Hades is immortal and does not die nor pass away, as long as the idea of the underworld persists so does my brother, whose form comes from the very soul of man."

Poseidon spoke, his voice was crash of the waves on the shore. "We permit lesser avatars of us to persist, ideas that grew and took shape from the imaginations of men, as such ghosts always have, to us they are but dreams, but passing thoughts in our minds, tiny fragments of our consciousness, that rise and fall effecting us little."

Hades rumbled like the earthquake. "Even we, the eternal personifications of the realities we embody are but specks in the body of that which contains all things, but is not contained." Hades hand closed around Hectate, as Zeus's entrapped Ares.

On the beach the armies of dragon tooth warriors and Amazon's stood stunned into silence and still awe, wind swept, and rained upon as the gods drove the weather into conflicting chaos around them.

Zeus extended his right hand, from his fingers lightening erupted causing wind, cloud and rain to spin around each digit. "Diana Champion of Olympus your heart cries out in a way it has never sung before, I Zeus am not ignorant. The heavens echo with the news that you have found your soul mate, but Diana of Themyscira your soul belongs to us, and We have not agreed let you go. The Kryptonian challenges us a god among men, which is insult enough, but We will not see your knee bend to another but me. You are mine to give and take as We see fit."

Kal tensed beside me. "I am not a god, I am a man, and if any knee bends it is not Diana to me, but mine before her, as I beg my lady's favour." Kal knelt upon the wind and took my fingers in his, he said. "Diana please take my hand in marriage, now and always. I will serve you as I have served the Earth from which you come, for ever and a day, with all that I am."

"Yes." I whispered to him. "A thousand times yes." To Zeus I said in anger and defiance.

"Kal and I are equals in this, if we kneel we kneel together." I fell to my knees beside Superman. "We bow before the alter of love that is the embodiment of power, and when we rise and stand, we shall stand together as one flesh, man and wife." I turned to look in my beloveds eyes. "I accept Kal because he accepts me as I am, an an equal, different yet in balance, male and female as we were created." I could not believe my words that came to me, from my heart, from pain and anger, and from truth and love. Before my sisters I had promised myself to Kal, and he had to me. "I swear before heaven and earth, this is forever." I declared.

Zeus thundered, and Themyscira trembled. "Because you dare defy the forces from which your powers flow you _will_ stand before Olympus – both of you, for my Champion you have declared yourself to be one with the Kryptonian, so shall you stand as one flesh, and as one flesh you will fall, this is the judgement of your King."

As Zeus spoke the very fabric of space time folded in on itself as I felt the power of old snap both Kal and I across the divide, I knew this journey and the destination non other than the land of the gods.

The thunder rolled on as we travelled. "To Mount Olympus you both will come, and there you will fight the army of the slain that your never ending battle for truth has justice has seeded into the earth."

I looked beneath me as Themyscira shrank and faded into the distance, I saw from the shores of my island home the dragon teeth warriors rise from the beach with us.

Zeus damned us saying. "You sowed in the wind, so you will also reap in the whirlwind, you will battle for eternity, that is your sentence for raising your hand against your gods, I give you over to a never ending war."

So it was Kal and I travelled from Hades to Earth and from Earth to Hell in the Heavens, and to endure the judgement of the gods. We shifted together hand in hand, eye to eye, our lips met as our feet touched the sands of the Arena of Olympus and our fate - the price of our hubris.


	18. Chapter 18

Diana and I rise from our knees on the sand of the arena, I can see no end to the blue sky above us. A perfect day here in the halls of Olympus the realm of the gods.

We have been deposited in the midst of a circular theatre. It is a mammoth construction of marble and gold, a stage befitting the gods, dwarfing even the modern stadia built for our latter day gods of sports. Shakespeare said that the whole world is a stage, and standing here it seems an accurate description of our circumstances, I have no doubt we have been brought here so the gods can act out our punishment as Zeus proclaimed it.

I wipe the tears from my beloveds eyes. Diana says to me. "As we were plucked from Themyscira to Olympus I saw my mother." Diana squeezed my hand. "Kal she mourns my passing – weeps for me again. I saw her knelt by the dais where we lay our dead, there was nothing but dust upon the marble, dust covered by a shroud. I knew it, saw it and understood. A body lay there once, the clay from which I once was made."

"Diana I saw you lying there – your body, but whatever happened, your soul left that body behind. I don't know what happened when you became one person again in Hades. Perhaps you reclaimed it."

"The dust Kal?"

"Maybe you brought all that mattered from that husk to yourself when you were remade?" I suggested. Diana closed her eyes and rested against my chest. "I confess the mysteries of how you came to be are beyond my understanding, at least for now." I said stroking her ebony locks. "All I know is this feels real, you are alive here with me."

She takes my hand and draws my fingers to her lips. "My mother has lost me twice." Diana looks into my eyes, before resting her head on my chest. We both understand loss.

"Touching." Booms the words of Zeus.

I look up to the distant Royal box, set high above the sand floor of the amphitheatre. Distance makes no difference to the reality of his voice, deep, resonant, vibrating the very sand beneath our feet. Yet I feel no awe, only anger at his unjust judgement.

"However you were brought here to bear your punishment proud mortals. Not to collude together brazenly in your unsanctioned affection."

This was the Zeus I knew of old, something mystical, powerful, but yet human, like the monster Darksied, in this form I could reach out and touch him. Whatever had appeared to us at Themyscira, that vast primeval triumvirate had passed back into the ether, and in its place were more readily understood avatars of the gods. Beside Zeus sat Hera his wife. Beyond them the other gods of the pantheon.

Diana cried out. "Hera have mercy!"

Zeus released thunderbolts from his fingers as he swept his arm across from him to bar Hera from rising to speak. "I am King of the gods, and like Prometheus who dared to defy me, you shall endure an eternity of anguish for your hubris!"

Yet in the eyes of the Queen of the gods, I detected a flicker of defiance, Diana had seen it too, and with the angry King's denouncement echoing around us, to the tune of thunder, and our stage lit by his lightening, we stood awaiting the coming onslaught, and we were not disappointed.

From the sand of the Arena arose the army of the slain, but these were not the corpses of the black lantern corps, not zombies, not the dead, rather these were alive. Fresh faced, and vital, men and women, heroes and Amazons from the classical age to the present, summoned from the dragon teeth of Hectate and bound by Olympus's power. This was the army the gods had plucked from the sands of Themyscira.

The first warrior presents himself and hefts his spear. I know not when he fell, perhaps it was Trojan soil. Others perhaps with Alexander, or later still, all of history appeared in the arena.

The silence is broken by the tumultuous sound of war. The battle cries of ancient times echo around us, and the spear is thrown.

The time has come to test our limits. First we find that within the confines of the arena that both Diana and I have our powers. We rise up above the battle, gladly, not wanting to have any part in this all too real tableau of war. Quickly however we discover we can touch the sky, or at least a celestial sphere that contains the arena, tracing the glassy smooth wall down we come to the seats that encircle us. Here the gods are seated beyond this invisible wall, we are sealed away from them, imprisoned and contained, as sure as if we had been shackled.

I punch the wall and there is nothing, no sound, no sense of it's solidity, and no indication that it will yield, after more tries I realised that all I am able to do is injure myself, Diana holds me back as my anger boils. Zeus sits laughing at our plight. Determined I dive through the rain of arrows and plunge into the sands. I burrow through the dirt only to find the shield continues - a spherical wall deep beneath the grit of the arena. I return to Diana who rests before the gods defiant demanding our freedom.

"Mighty Zeus, how many times have I honoured you as Olympus's Champion – did I not for a time sit among you as an equal."

"That was not my doing." Zeus thundered these words as a rebuke. He extended his hand. "I was absent from Olympus then – but I returned, and saw you returned to Earth.

"Amazon – am I not your King?

Diana did not answer. Zeus said. "I am your Lord now and forever, and you are mine now and forever. Accept your fate as Prometheus, and perhaps in an aeon or so I shall relent."

"I know what you are!" Diana roared her anger tangible. "Finally, after a life time of confused and contradictory visions of what the gods are – I see the truth. I learned the gods were once divided, into two pantheons, the first Greek, the second Roman, and yet this is nothing next to the truth. You - all of you, are but a fragments of something greater, each one is but one part of a corporate being, the sum of many visions of Olympus over the ages. Greater Zeus came to Themyscira, and he for a moment was enraged, and now Superman and I must pay for that single fleeting jealous thought! The price, an eternity here before the avatar of that anger? That thought given form! No my Lord you are just but one of countless expressions of greater whole."

"I am ZEUS – KING of the gods. I know not of any other!" Zeus roared.

"Then you are as ignorant as any mortal, ignorant of what you truly are, but a tiny cog in a greater machine, a cell in an organism. You are ignorant of what you might finally become if only you had a truly open mind, but you are ignorant of the truth – you are but one vision of Zeus among many."

"NO!" Zeus stood up and unleashed upon as a force of power that knocked Diana and I into the field of battle were the warriors fought among themselves a chaotic melee without sense or reason, and as we smashed into the sand of the Arena like two cannon balls. In the crater amongst the bodies we had struck in a haze of lightening that crackled around us, we both realised at much the same time, that the gods had stripped us of our abilities, or perhaps changed the laws of reality within the sphere, I know not which, either way it does not matter for whether we changed or the rules changed, the end result was the same, we were now on an equal footing with the reanimated warriors of old. Diana and I scrambled out onto the level sands, and as we did so, we became targets.

I rolled across the ground, and ducked beneath a sword, this was a battle, I was mortal, and the other guy had a sword. Even during our experience of Asgard, which lasted as long as it lasted, is not a thousand years but a day in the heavens? There I fought alongside Wonder Woman, but we were as gods fighting gods, we had our powers and they had theirs. Here in the midst of the arena I am but a man and she a woman – thank heavens more than that Diana is an Amazon. Her foot strikes hard and one of thousands falls, she tosses me his sword, before using his shield to fell a sister Amazon, who comes against her in the madness of this crazy fight. Diana brings the edge of the disc up into the exposed jaw of her attacker. Now we both have a shield and a sword, taken from the fallen, we at least have an equal footing on the battlefield and so we must fight or fall. Diana with a lifetime of Amazon training is accomplished in the deadly arts, her blade is like an extension of herself. I am a boy from Kansas clumsy in comparison, but we stand shoulder to shoulder, and in the chaos this cooperation gives us an advantage in the mad free for all of the arena.

I try my best, but my best is easily matched by fighters who learned their craft centuries before I was born, and it inevitable that a sword finds it mark. Cutting my thigh, my mistake is brought to me in blood and pain, I held my shield held too high, my leg was exposed, and the cut is deep so I fall, the pain comes fast and real, we are not spared that, it is a divine punishment after all. Diana tries to help me, but I struck out and find my opponents belly, in the horror of the fight, God forgive me, I find reason to cheer my brutality, I am alive. I press on but my leg burns and I am weakened, blood runs wet from the wound, and I feel the bite of steel once again. I meet the warrior, a Roman legionnaire this time face to face, Diana at my back, but I know my time is soon over, then I feel the sword of another attacker bite deep, it slips between my ribs, and I am done for.

Or so I think as blackness overcomes me. Then come the nightmares of battle, as I dream of my mistakes, my failure and my death, and it is darkness that greets my eyes when next I open them, but thank God, a gentle hand that brushes my brow.

"Kal?" Diana asks me, as her lips brush mine. I rise from her lap, where my head rests, and push my aching body against the cold stone wall behind me, I see under the arch immediately in front of us, and beyond that the arena floor, above the blue sky has gone, it's night and the stars twinkle in the black canvass of space. Some of the days warriors have withdrawn it seems from the battle into the walls of the Stadia, like us. I see among the arches rest the beings whose fate it is to fight against us and each other in the arena, others lay on the sands outside, some stir like me, they move in the moonlight amidst pools of blackness that I know can only be blood.

"Like Prometheus." Diana explains.

I look into her face all but hidden in the shadow. I understand her, I have grasped the nature of our punishment. "Like Prometheus whose liver was eaten daily by an eagle, only to regrow and heal over night, to experience the same agony the next day?" I spoke in a bitter but dry whisper, my bones ached, and I felt sore, but I remembered my injuries, my hands slipped to my chest, to my leg, I felt the heat of newly healed wounds.

"Yes Kal as we rest we heal, no matter how grievously hurt we are, I fear even death is but fleeting respite here."

"As I proved?" I was angry with myself for falling so soon, I wondered whether Diana had stood undefeated as the sun set, somehow I knew she had.

"We can work together, you will learn and I will teach you how to stand, perhaps we can yet find a way to free ourselves of this. I nodded, like my mom always says, where there is life there is always hope, and if the price of my life with Diana was a never ending battle to spend but a brief moment each night in her arms, then so be it, the blood and pain was worth it.


	19. Chapter 19

I awake my head nestles on the shoulder of my love, Superman stirs, as I bury my face into his neck, I want this moment to last, but I know it won't. Days have become weeks, and each one has been more of the same. The coming of sun wakes the sleepers in and around the arena. Beside Kal and I rest the soldiers whose sole purpose is to wage war. Each warrior awakes renewed, healed of the previous battle's wounds, many coming back from death, many stir into life where they fell. Kal and I grudgingly rise with the dawn, we must be ready for the blood lust that will descend upon the arena with the light of the new morning. With the madness the war continues, I am grateful that Kal and I still hold on to our sanity, just as we hold on to each other.

Clarity of thought in this place is hardly a gift, that is the intention of the gods. The others in the arena are at least oblivious to their fate, consumed with the either the days desire to fight, or the nights stupor.

Morning has broken, and so has the silence. Roars and screams ring out, as blades clash, and armour rocks against shield. The air is red with blood falling like rain as warrior meets warrior, and as the number thins so the strongest inevitably make their way to where I stand with Kal.

Together we wait for them - back to back, ready to fight and fight again.

With the passing days I have learned to recognise the strongest on the field, it is a small advantage. Our clarity of thought no doubt is meant to torment us, while their madness guarantees these soldiers will do as the gods command, slay us irrespective of their well being. Don't get me wrong it is cold madness, this blood lust – it gives them mechanical purpose, they are devoid of fear they only want to kill, their skills are not blunted, but by allowing us to remember each day, to feel each savage cut, and to endure death the gods are permitting us to learn. It is a cruel business, but we take what little advantage we get and I can now match style with substance, faces, armour, scars, tells that mean I can better engage these my enemies.

Kal for his part grows stronger and fitter in mortal terms, he is harder, and he fights with me sword in hand, amongst the blood and gore. I shout to him encouragement and school him as he humbly learns the craft to which every Amazon is born. Here he has the best teachers the gods could find, even if that was not their intent. Here in the arena the price of failure is pain, pain unto death, but death here is only a brief respite until morning.

If it were not for one hope that sustains us through the day I think we would probably fall on our swords with the dawn knowing life does not end, but we don't, for there is a prize to be won, the gods are clever enough, they give a crumb of comfort to fight for – to live for. As darkness comes so the blood lust lifts, and the warriors fall into a confused stupor, like puppies they murmur, and those that live seek the shadows afraid of the light.

Then Kal and I can be together hold each other, nurse our wounds, if we live to see the end of the day, if we don't fall. Kal has his prize, he has me, I have mine I can hold him close, the cost is the butchers bill.

At least here the slain have peace at least until morning.

Kal and I fight on, his rhythm is solid, his breath deep but consistent, he holds his place, Superman first learned swordsmanship, but Kal has learned how a mortal man can heft an axe, how to throw a spear with lethal accuracy, he has learned the bow, which each day there is a new challenge. As time passes the gods do not let us grow complacent, and the weapons and even the warriors seem to change, because the gods are not so greater fools, that they can't see we learn our opponents strengths and weaknesses, so when we grow confident they change the rules, and challenge us anew with fresh faces from different histories, and different weapons. Time passes and so does history, for musket's now howl in the arena as today I am forced to deflect lead shot with my bracelets, I maybe powerless but I have my training.

With gunpowder came cannon, and the challenge to stay alive comes hard again, with each changing era we spend nights alone, as both of us learn new skills, condemned to cradle the other's corpse in silence, waiting the mornings hoped for resurrection in the darkness with an unspoken fear deep within that this day might be different, that this day the other might never wake. Is it a measure of the gods cruelty that I cry tears of joy when he does, knowing that his living means we have yet another day of slaughter among us.

Tonight the fates are kind to Kal and I for we both live, I have my wounds, splinters from a broken shield, he deep cuts, we have avoided being shot today, the bodies of the slain make a fair defensive wall if need be. My ears ring with the sound of gunfire long after the musket and cannon have fallen silent, and we both smell of gunpowder and smoke.

As I stroke his hair damp with sweat and blood, and I wonder yet again if we can survive this punishment our sanity intact, but as we hold each other my prayers are answered.

"Diana of Themyscira." I am startled by the voice, as is Kal, never have any of the warriors stirred from the stupor that descends with darkness to speak to us, and yet here one does exactly that, she is Amazon judging by her armour, the cloak she wears is suspiciously fresh, the moonlight finds her features as she pulls back the hood to reveal her face, and I gasp because I recognise her.

"Lady Athena." The goddess presses her finger to my lips. "Shh. Zeus's attention wanes, his anger simmers, otherwise I could not slip away to speak with you."

"You will help us." Kal rose to sprawl on the dirt from lying down, looking up at the crouching goddess.

"I can do very little directly, but I can help you with wisdom, and instruction. I have watched you both." The goddess whispered her sweet fragrance bliss as it washed away the stench of the battlefield. Athena took my hand.

"Diana you are consummate warrior, you honour your patrons in all you do - this I expected of you and nothing less, but to see how valiantly you fight together, you and your beloved.

"How the Kryptonian has fought first with courage, how humbly he learned with Diana."

To Kal she said. "I have seen how you have applied yourself, and you have made my heart soar. Not since Diomedes, the only mortal man to ever see me in my full divine form, has a man's courage so captivated my interest."

I gasped, high praise indeed. Athena said. "Diana I see why you have given your heart to this man."

Kal blushed, beneath the blood and the grime I felt the warmth through my fingers. Athena stretched out her hand and touched him. "An Alien world distant and strange gave birth to you my warrior, but if Diana can accept you to her bosom, so I and her god-mother's accept you, as Hera permits I bestow on you the great gift I gave Diomedes, when the time comes I will aid you."

My heart trembled when I heard this promise.

Athena looked to me and said. "Diana you know Olympus all to well, you know us, the gods constantly bicker, I want you to be aware, for the time comes when you will be able to use this foolishness against them." With these words Athena merged into the shadows and into nothingness.

When sleep came to Kal and I we rested with new found hope. The goddesses of Themyscira were not going to permit this terrible thing to continue forever, and when the time would come they would aid us. I was certain now we would survive.


	20. Chapter 20

I'm not sure what being blessed by Athena as a chosen warrior means, but Diana seems impressed that the goddess of wisdom has taken me to her heart. I'm a practical guy, a farmers son from Kansas, but I can appreciate that for all their faults, and I see many human failings in the ways of gods of Olympus, I can't escape the fact these beings are truly ancient, they were old by human standards when the Vandal Savage was clubbing his way to dominance in that brutal world of human prehistory. That fact reminds me that great age in itself means little without the heart to do justly and seek peace humbly. To be charged with pride – hubris, for following my heart, for embracing Diana is a measure of Zeus's injustice, and yet from within their ranks came the desire to bring a message of compassion and peace, a history that culminates in the woman I love.

Diana and I enter the arena, where the many days of war have changed it's landscape into a rutted field, covered with craters, trenches, rivers that run with foul water across the vastness of this amphitheatre. The crack of heavy guns, tell me the gods are unleashing the horrors of the twentieth century's mechanised means of slaughter upon us. I sigh and find the heart to smile, because Diana's eyes find mine and give me hope.

In battle we struggle, dodging bullets, and crashing into fox holes, bright colours are not an advantage in this war, and like our flesh our materials present themselves bright and clean, fresh for the new day provided we sleep, like children waiting for Santa the change happens when we dream.

It's nothing like Christmas here however.

Zeus has returned to the arena, he often does when the wheel of history turns, and we face a new challenge.

In the corner of my eye I see a white flash, my mind is keen, my memory remains vivid, and I recognise the vision, it is the enamel armour of the resurrected Ares. As Diana and I fight this ghostly image troubles me. Worse, I begin to see the god of war time and again hidden in the battlefield, sometimes in the faces of the warriors who come against me, sometimes hidden in the dirt of the arena, or in the foul waters that flow through it.

Finally I can stand this no longer. I tell her. "I see Ares." Diana looks to me, her eyes tell me the truth before her lips.

"I too see the god of war, I have seen him lurking here since the beginning."

We huddle in a shell hole as a burst of machine gun fire chatters over us.

"This is like a feast to the god of bloodlust, his ghost haunts here, growing fat on the fear and the pain."

I nod my face is crossed by a grimace. We return fire, never sure from which side will come death, such is the anarchy here.

"Diomedes received the gift of god-sight from Athena." Diana told me. "It is something I gained from Artemis with the hunters eye, I see the divine even when mortal eyes do not."

"Then Athena has given this... ability to me."

"It seems so."  
The chatter of guns made conversation next to impossible and as the day wore on I found myself wishing for the simpler if more brutal combat of the ancient ways, of hand to hand conflict, with it's honour and certainty. Ares for his part seem to stalk me growing closer by the moment. I reach out to Diana, he is upon us, she sees him rising from the mud, he takes gun fire, shards of enamel teeth fall to the ground, as the god of war releases more from his hands like a white hail of tooth bullets they quiet the guns directed at us, if not the chaos of the battlefield. Diana strikes with her bayonet, and the blade shatters against his armour, his hand latches around my neck, his other snags Diana, his laughter echoes around the field louder and louder, until the guns of the warriors fall silent, and my own mind reels as he chokes me into unconsciousness, my last thoughts are threefold, the sight of the warriors summoned to kill us returning to dust, the sound of Zeus's thundering voice, and the touch of Diana's hand on mine.

* * *

Kal is held fast as am I by Ares's hands, his manic laughter rings out interrupted only by the overarching roar of Zeus.

"Ares! What are you doing, interfering with my judgement upon these mortals. Son return to my side, and let the battle recommence."

Ares chuckles more quietly to himself. Kal lolls unconscious in his left hand, he holds me more lightly with his right, I struggle in his grip, like Zeus I wonder what his purpose might be.

"Father you have given me a feast of blood these past days, upon days of battle, and I grew drunk with the joy of this."

Zeus laughed. "Aye I thought you might, perhaps my most foolish child you now can see the worth in great mortals fighting for our cause once more."

"Aye there is great joy in the rise and fall of mortals, their short lives, I have in the past sought whole sale destruction to sate my appetite, but this endless cycle of life and death is more filling than a single course of destruction, more a banquet of tiny delectable dishes that together feed me."

"I am glad my son you can learn this lesson at the hands of these mortals, I fear the bloodshed of the last century of men, their great wars clouded your judgement, bigger is not better, and you grew fat, complacent and desiring destruction for destruction's sake, better mortal man is ground to dust, reformed again to be ground down again, than sent to the ground once and never to rise again."

"Oh father I have learned much." Ares declared.

He threw Kal to the sand, and I saw my beloved stir, while Ares remained immobile like a statue, albeit one which had me in a vice like grip, the red fire had gone from his eyes. I turned my head enough to glimpse that same light burning in the eyes of Kal.

"Have you forgotten that I have cursed you Amazon?" Ares laughed, his voice tumbling from my beloved's lips. "You have kissed Superman with passion, oh so many times, and now I have entered his heart and mind, he is mine."

"What good will that do you here." I spat.

Zeus thundered above us. "Ares – What is this madness?"  
"Be afraid Zeus. I am your son, godhood united with an alien god here in Olympus!"

I felt the air crackle as Ares let rip his power, and Superman-Ares rose into the air. Whatever magic had robbed us of our powers was broken, as we first were in the arena, so we were again. Ares in his scheme to rebel against his father needed Superman's abilities, and he had broken the spell that constrained them, which released my powers too. I remembered Athena's advice, this must be the moment!

I struggled against the immobile god, but Ares had left his physical might in this empty avatar, and he held me fast in this strange death grip, but I was determined to free myself. "Hera help me." I gasped.

"You possess a vessel of great power." Zeus admitted to Ares. "But this arena is created for the express purpose of imprisoning mortal beings such as the one you now use. My son you could only enter this realm as a ghost, and in like fashion you must leave in your divine form. Whatever Avatar you have taken you must leave behind. For what it is worth I am impressed by your trickery, and perhaps in a millennia or so I will release the Kryptonian to you, now put him back and let my games begin again."

Superman-Ares laughed. He held out his hand, and from the depths of the Arena a dark cloud appeared, one that grew into the swirling shadow cloaked form of Hectate, she threw to Superman-Ares an object that crackled into existence with her. It was great primeval magic, older than the power of Olympus that created the arena, and for a moment I forgot my struggles with the dead statue and watched the dark thing fall into Superman-Ares's fingers.

"You know what this is?" Ares asked Zeus.

"No!" The King of the gods had never sounded so stunned.

Ares held the weapon aloft in Superman's hand. "This is the flint sickle that Cronus, used to castrate his father Uranus, and now it falls to me to use it upon you!"

* * *

I awoke within my own mind, dislocated from myself staring at my own hands as if they were not my own, in my hand I held an ancient sickle, a flint hook, I sensed the dark heart of the mind that possessed mine, and I recognised him as I might a foul smell, the signature of Ares, and yet something else intrigued me, there was a sound of blood, the rushing flow of vein and artery, the sweet metallic scent of blood and the rhythm of the heart, I was feeling the ebb and flow the god of bloodlust's own primeval soul.

A voice came to me, it was Athena's words. "When the time comes I will aid you."

I realised this was the time, I felt the goddess of Wisdom move me forward. This was magic and I was working with it and through it, all my experiences came together in this moment, I had a new perspective - I understood what my Pa had meant about being able so see and understand. Suddenly I could picture Ares before me in the dark corner of my mind, naked without armour. He was but a rude youth dancing in delight, his face gleeful like a mad man. I saw my hands in the shadows of my imagination forming and rising between us, before I seized the figure of the man in my mind.

* * *

I could not see what occurred behind me, my head would not turn enough in Ares's avatar's grasp, summoning all my strength I kicked out at the enamel edifice, while my fingers pulled at the stony hand that held me, and with a deafening crack Ares's death grasp broke, I gasped as the hard sharp material cut my fingers, and my neck ached with the bruising vice like grip. I fell back into the wind, catching the air beneath me I rose in time to see the war god strike at the invisible wall that separated Olympus from the battlefield.

Zeus towered over us, a giant or immense proportions and his fingers wrapped around the glass walls of our prison, and as Superman-Ares struck with sickle so Zeus turned it. Suddenly everything was falling. Now I realised what the arena really mimicked.

In flight I turned with the glass keeping Zeus in sight. I saw that below the grit of the battlefield lay another sphere of glass joined to this one by a tiny stem, I realised we were trapped in some great hour glass, one which Zeus now turned reversing the flow of fate.

Superman-Ares whipped the sickle in a great circle, opening a hole in the glass, and as the world tumbled about me, I thought the god of war was about take my beloved away from me, and instinctively I dived to stop him, to take hold of Kal, dodging the falling debris and rain of sand from arena floor, I hurtled to where Superman flew.

In that split second Superman seemed to writhe as if fighting. I was then beside him and I caught the Man of Tomorrow in my hands. He looked at me, and I expected so see Ares soul in his eyes, but I saw Kal's love instead. We passed through the opening and towards the thrones of Olympus.

Zeus roared. "No! Stay back or die!" Kal's hand held the sickle, and he feared it's power.

Zeus unleashed a barrage of thunderbolts at us, lightening flashed, and Kal thrust himself in to the midst of Zeus's attack. I cried out. "No!" I truly believed the magic of Zeus would kill Superman. Magic was perhaps his greatest weakness, but I was confounded, and surprised.

The Lightening encircled him, and attacked him, but I was stunned to see him smile. At the same time I saw the ghostly form of Ares fall from Superman driven out by Zeus's terrible lightening. Now I truly feared for Kal, but he hung in the blackness beyond Olympus and chuckled. "It tickles."

I yelped excitedly like a little girl, he was going to be okay, against all odds, the magic wasn't harming him.

It was then Hera Queen of the gods spoke out, answering my unspoken question. "Mighty Zeus both Diana of Themyscira and Kal of Krypton have bathed in the waters of the Styx that granted invulnerability to Achilles, your lightening is just as electricity to them now, and since they are not harmed by natural lightening so your bolts cannot phase them."

Zeus's eyes widened in anger and frustration. The stream of lightening fell from his outstretched hand but his attack appeared to only tickle the Man of Steel.

Zeus roared with rage at his impotency. Superman placed Gaia's sickle into my hand. He said to me. "Go Diana, I trust you." With these words he threw me out of the arena's odd reality, and out into Olympus proper. As he met another blast from the Angry Zeus, as he took the electrical fire upon himself, I fell upon our tormentor.

As I entered the realm of Olympus, instantly reality warped around me and I landed before the gods of my people, they were sat in their thrones looking over the heavens, all save for Zeus, who stood before the chaos of the Arena as the gods witnessed it.

In one hand Zeus held the hour glass, and as he turned this, the world before the gods turned, the one was connected to the other, the hour glass and the arena beyond were one in the same. Zeus saw me and he saw the sickle. The King of the gods heeded his wife's words and lowered his outstretched hand, and the lightening ceased.

Standing on balcony to the gods, I faced them all. It was Athena that had told me that the rivalry between the gods, between Zeus and Ares would give Kal and I the opportunity to escape, and she had been right. I held the sickle of Gaia in my hand. Behind me I heard Kal's voice, free of the lightening Superman had also come through to Olympus. As he flew closer Kal cried out to me one world loud and clear. "Justice!"

Zeus dropped the hour glass, as it fell he said to me. "Is this how it must end Diana of Themyscira?Will my own child strike me down and take my throne. Will you do to me as I did my father, Cronus? Just as Cronus struck down his father Uranus - will you and the Kryptonian found a new age of the gods, a new family of gods to rule over all?"

Kal swept over us, somersaulting to stand behind Zeus throne, his hands rested upon it. I drew back my arm, raising the stone sickle the Earth had created, a weapon to kill a god.

Not one of the mighty Olympians dare move, even my god-mothers had no idea what I would do, and yet Kal's eyes met mine, and we knew what must be done, he and I.

I raised the sickle. I held it high above my head, and fixed my eyes on Zeus, his curled beard twitched, and in his eyes I saw fear, and with that revelation I threw the sickle.

The flint blade flew, it's course fast and true, until it struck the King of the gods as I intended, the sickle's tip drew blood as it fell across Zeus's cheek, turning in the air cutting his face, before hurtling to Superman's outstretched hand.

Kal held the bloodied sickle over the seat of King of Olympus.

I said to Zeus my answer plainly. "I am not a god. Nor do I wish to be."

Zeus touched his cheek, that ran red and wet with his blood, darkening his white beard, and looked at the stain on his fingers. I had delivered my message, finally I believed Zeus understood.

"Kal even now could cleave your throne in two." I told him.

Behind me I heard Hectate cry out, she had brought Ares from out of the tumult to Olympus.

"No it wasn't meant to be like this."

"What do you want of me?" Zeus asked ignoring the old witch.

"Your blessing." I replied. "For Kal and I. Peace between the gods, and all that is mine, my children, and their children forever and the same peace for my people, for Themyscira – forever, and your word that this will always be so."

Zeus did not turn around, he knew Olympus itself would fall if Kal brought the sickle to bear upon his throne.

Hera spoke again. "Zeus let us make peace, or forever regret this folly."

For a moment the King of the gods struggled with his own pride. "Very well you have my word." He extended his hand to me red with his blood. I extended my own, bleeding fingers, torn on the enamel avatar of Ares in the arena, our bloody mitts met. Our eyes looked into each other. "I would have made you my queen." Zeus whispered.

I nodded – I had known from the beginning his anger had been driven by jealously and lust.

I let go of his hand he dare not act against us as long as the sickle was in our hands.

Kal flew to my side.

"Why did you not finish him?" Hectate spat.

Kal laughed at her. "You expected us to kill Zeus on your behalf." He stated. "But you didn't count on the fact we're not gods, you judged us by your standards, but we fight for truth and justice, not for ourselves."

I said. "You thought you had the perfect plan, you provoked the gods against us with wild stories about our children becoming a new generation of titans, you aided Ares in his own schemes believing that either Ares would rise and succeed, supplanting Zeus, or else we would gain the upper hand – the result you believed would be the same, you thought you couldn't lose."

Ares pushed the witch goddess to one side, his armour black once more. "How did you defeat me?" He demanded of Kal.

Superman smiled. "The oldest of magics." His eyes crossed to the silent and beautiful face of Athena, who met his gaze with a wry smile. Kal explained. "It was in the blood we shared you and I, in battle, we fought, we bled on each other, your blood met mine, just as Diana has touched Zeus now. That means Ares we are blood brothers in war, it means you cannot open my mind with your magic, without opening your own to me."

"Even if my mind was open to you - how could you overcome a god in a battle of wills?" Ares raged.

Superman's arm circled around me, drawing me close to him.

It was then Aphrodite walked forward, she did not speak, she did not need to, actions speak more loudly that words. She smiles broadly a special blessing upon us I don't doubt it for one moment, as she opens the portal home to Themyscira, Superman and I rise from Olympus together.

Ares shouts again. "How did you defeat me?" Kal looked down and says. "The most powerful magic of all."

We say together to defeated god of war. "Love."


	21. Chapter 21

Epilogue. Part one.

Wonder Woman and I descend from the east the rising sun is behind us as we leave the realm of Olympus for Themyscira. Hand in hand, we're a bright against the sky, red, blue and gold. Diana's hair flowing behind her into the sun like polished ebony, the red sail of my cloak pitches and stretches a flag behind us.

I wonder below how Paradise Island reads this unashamed signal of our affection.

The Amazon's sight us, their cries proclaim our arrival, shouts reverberate around the central complex of buildings, the seat of government, and Diana's sisters run to greet her return.

Our red boots make land fall on the marble paved walk way before the columned façade.

Queen Hippolyta hurries to us with scant regard for protocol, for thought of regal procession, there is something more primal at work here, a mother greeting her daughter, a child returned, safe and sound – released from death.

The two embrace and cry together, cheeks wet where lips press, the air hums with laughter, scented with tears of joy as a wave of emotion rises and falls across the Amazons as one spirit, one nation, a collective consciousness reunited once again with it's heart and passion – Diana.

I stand a lone Patriarch before the divine feminine, and I wait patiently not immune to the emotion of the moment, my isolation is short lived, for Diana's hand reaches back to mine, and draws me to her, to her mother, the Queen. Hippolyta's eyes still brim with tears as she looks into mine, I see around her neck a silver disk mounted on a silver chain, it bears two symbols intertwined, one is a Kryptonian glyph that resembles the letter S, the other is Athena's eagle rendered from WW. If my throat were not already dry, I would have been rendered speechless, that I can still be moved in the midst of this emotional outpouring is testament to the wonder I feel.

This disc is the same one that Diana wore against her heart, this must have been left behind when her body reformed around her reunited soul in Hades. Hippolyta taking the disk from the funeral dais had further inscribed it with her daughters crest alongside mine. Mounting this on a chain and wearing the resulting necklace as a keepsake.

She gestured to the medallion knowing my eyes were now fixed on it. "This shield Superman, I am told means hope, it may have been sacrilegious to cling onto such hope when the gods snatched Diana from us so soon after your triumphal return from the underworld, but I did, we all hoped that you would overcome Olympus.

"Kal-El you have done what I believed in impossible, twice." Hippolyta takes my other hand and holds it to her heart. "You have brought Diana back to us."

"I did not do this alone." I said quietly.

Diana squeezed me closer to her. "You came to Hades with scant thought for your own safety, on Hectates whim."

"I am impetuous – Bruce chides me for it." Diana laughed with me. To Hippolyta I said. "Your Majesty it means a great deal to me, to be accepted by you."

"I cannot fail to give my blessing to one who would face the depths of hell and heights of heaven, and battle the gods themselves."

I learn from the hushed voices that whisper among the crowd that gathers around Diana and me, that our victory in Olympus has been revealed by Hera herself to the Amazons prior to our return. I suspect Zeus finds himself once again on the back foot with his eternally long suffering wife.

I speak to the Queen, conscious now of the assembling Amazons who join us here before the Palace.

"Majesty I am touched beyond words by your gesture, and I can't deny I would have fought any and all for Diana." I looked at my beloved, and she touches my lips with her finger.

"Mother I am can tell you Kal's sword arm is strong, his heart brave, his courage, skill, and dedication won the admiration and favour of Athena herself, but I ask for a blessing not for this, but because you believe me when I say, no one else in all the heavens and all the worlds can please me, can care for me, can love me as Kal does, it is our love Mother that deserves above all else your blessing, because it made all else possible."

Hippolyta closed her eyes and nodded. Then taking our joined hands she said. "No one could doubt the depth of your affection for only a love strong and eternal could withstand the trials you have endured, my blessing is one of joy to see a bond so true and strong."

With the Sun at it's zenith Diana I stood in the arena of Themyscira, both of us were dressed in red silk Chitons, almost indecently transparent. Diana wore a golden veil, a sign of virginity, the colours were for fire, for warmth and light in life. Around us the Amazon's gathered brought together to feast and celebrate our marriage. Hippolyta joined our hands once more and called us man and wife, as she spoke of long life, happiness and of children. Then the skies above us reverberated with the sound of thundering trumpets as Athena and Aphrodite appeared before the assembled Amazons. The goddesses stood either side of Hippolyta who fell to her knee between them, as did her people, the stadium crackled with shifting stance of the Amazons. Only Diana and I remained standing. We had earned that right.

"Diana and Kal-El, Champions of Earth and Olympus, we present you a gift of the gods to seal our bond, to make sure our promises." Athena declared.

Aphrodite extended her hand. "Here I present to you an Obol."

"As do I." Athena acted likewise.

Together as one, Diana and I gasped. The goddesses had brought with them obol's we had made together from the bangle Diana had given me, the one forged with a lock of her hair, and in their hands the silver adamant discs sparkled and transformed into two rings.

"It is the tradition of lovers in this age to exchange rings as a symbol of their love." Aphrodite sang her words with an angelic tone. "So Athena and I give you rings."

Athena gave mine to Diana, and Aphrodite placed the ring for Diana in my hand.

So Diana placed my ring on my finger, and I hers. Only then did I lift her veil and kiss her, and the cheers of the Amazons was like thunder. Then we made haste directly to rooms prepared for us, as is the Ancient Greek tradition, while Diana's sisters sang colourful songs of encouragement to us - the new couple, as they feasted.

Their anthems would have made me blush, echoing as they did across the Island, that is if I hadn't already felt a rush of blood as I lay with my beloved, as our lips met, and we gave way to the passion that had smouldered between us for so long, in an unique union. When the master and mistress of flight meet the earth does not so much move as remain untouched, as we made our own thunder, gravity of no consequence, moving in three dimensions, making the sky high above Themyscira our marital bed, the clouds our covers, the sun our light, vibrating the air around us with shock waves that had a beat of their own. We are one together in a way only we can enjoy, until that moment it is fair to say I have never made love, never experienced the joy of cutting loose in the fullness of my power, and I never dreamed of the ecstasy that having that power met with equal passion and strength. Secure in the knowledge the magical nature of Themyscira meant we were alone and unseen above the earth.

-:*:-

Epilogue part two.

"Hello, I'm Jonny Nevada and I'm your host for this televised special from Washington DC. We're here outside the White house where the President is holding a reception for two of the Justice Leagues finest. As you can see from our pictures the great and the good from Washington are meeting here to toast the happy couple.

"Well Jonny, I'd say they are the finest. I'd hate to imagine the world without them."

"That's true Bob. America – indeed the world is excited to learn Superman and Wonder Woman are officially a couple." Jonny Nevada's long suffering side kick grinned happily.

"Well Jonny, like I said earlier, it's amazing how many people thought they were an item already."

Jonny Nevada nodded seriously, before turning to his other guest.

"That isn't the case is it Miss Lane?" Jonny Nevada asked the former reporter, who for once had forgone her casual attire for a smart suit in lavender, to match her eyes, which didn't wrinkle as she smiled.

Nevada pressed on with his well know brand of warm enthusiasm. "I should say for those not familiar with Metropolis's leading Newspaper the Daily Planet, that Miss Lane is considered the foremost authority on Superman since the Man of Steel made his first appearance over the skies of the big Apricot – isn't that right Miss Lane?"

"I don't know about that Jonny. I'm just lucky to have been close to the action when I was reporter."

"Oh come on Miss Lane – surely your not telling me there wasn't anything between you and Superman, weren't you once called Superman's Girlfriend?"

"That was a lifetime ago Jonny."

"Jonny, we should remind viewers Miss Lane was widowed earlier this year in the terrorist bombing of the Planet News Room."

"Yes we're truly sorry for your loss." Jonny said with a serious expression. Which quickly changed to a more earnest look. "But Lois, you don't mind if I call you Lois, as Editor of the Daily Planet you must have an observation about the happy couple?"

"They have been good friends for some time Mr Nevada. I guess it was always just a matter of time before that friendship evolved into something more."

"But they've been working together for a number of years, Miss Lane. What do you think held Superman back from popping the question?"

"I imagine he had his reasons Jonny..."

"Sorry to cut you off there Miss Lane, but we have confirmation that Superman and Wonder Woman will appear with the President, on the White House Lawn, before flying – under their own power, naturally, to the UN where the delegates their are gathering to honour the couple with a celebration in New York.

-:*:-

Epilogue part three.

"Gentlemen, as the Executive Officer for Homeland Security let me welcome to this meeting the Federal Agency Oversight Committee, while I'm sure you all as the respective heads of your organisations know each other, you may not be familiar with Dr Winters.

The young woman was attractive brunette, and out numbered in a room of middle aged servicemen, gathered in this Washington Bunker, although her tailored grey business suit was appropriate given their own sober uniforms.

"Gentleman." She began. "As you know above us the President is celebrating the de facto Marriage Royal of the two leading superheroes from our own meta-human community. It falls to us to consider all possible threats to United States. Since the Roosevelt administration, that created the Omega Sanction to deal with the possible threat arising from the first masked vigilantes, the need to plan for every eventuality has been recognised by each successive generation. From this first Agency came others notably Checkmate and latterly OMAC. I don't need to remind you of the chequered history of these organisations, but that is not to say they were founded on sound intentions.

"As some of you know this committee's unique remit was first instituted during the Presidency of Lex Luthor who foresaw this possibility that we celebrate today – I direct you to the notes which deal with potential threats arising from this union.

Dr Winters pointed to the file replicated for each member of the committee. The title read 'Project Hyperion'.

"Gentlemen with regard to the Super-Wonder couple, in the words of many an activist over the years – I say with all seriousness – we must consider the children."

-'*'-

Author's note: Well folks there it is, Clark Kent is dead! The never ending battle of course continues - I just want to thank all those who have reviewed this story while it was a work in progress. Especial thanks goes to Superman – Wonder Woman Yahoo Group who encouraged me to expand the 'mini-fic' into a novella. I will thank ahead of time all those who have yet to enjoy and review this story.


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